Sixth Sunday of Easter
There was a centurion, Cornelius. He was an upright and God-fearing man, respected by the whole Jewish nation. An angel appeared to him, and directed him to summon St. Peter to his home. When St. Peter arrived, Cornelius fell down at his feet and did him homage. The first pope corrected him: “Get up. I myself am also a human being” (Acts 10:26). St. Peter would not allow Cornelius to worship him or to pay him more respect than was his due. Although this pagan centurion had gotten a lot of things right in his life, he still had a lot to learn about the identity of Jesus Christ and of his apostles and the nature of his Church. Paying homage to St. Peter was a serious blunder.
The last of the Ignatian rules for discernment would have been helpful in such a situation. Although one may receive consolation in prayer, one must carefully distinguish the time of the consolation from what comes after it. After the period of consolation has subsided, the soul is still elated and fervent, but it often makes resolutions that are not, themselves, from God. Such resolutions, Ignatius says, may be the product of our own reasoning, or they may come from the good spirit or even the evil spirit.
In the case of Cornelius, he began with a vision of an angel. That was a true consolation and an extraordinary gift from a good spirit. Cornelius then decided to fall down at the feet of St. Peter and do him homage, but that decision was clearly not from God or from the good spirit. It was the work of his own misguided reasoning or of a temptation from the evil spirit. In any case, in the centurion’s enthusiasm, he failed to realize that he had overstepped God’s will. Happily for him, St. Peter was right there. The first pope corrected him fraternally, baptized him, and brought him into the divine life of our Church.