St. Peter’s Vision at Joppa
Was a vision of nature responsible for the conversion of the Gentiles?
Acts 11:1-18 – the Reading for Monday, April 14.
The Apostles and the brothers who were in Judea heard the Gentiles too had accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem the circumcised believers confronted him saying, “You entered the house of uncircumcised people and ate with them.”
Peter began and explained it to them step by step, saying, “I was at prayer in the city of Joppa when in a trance I had a vision, something resembling a large sheet coming down, lowered from the sky by its four corners, and it came to me. Looking intently into it, I observed and saw the four-legged animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky.”
“I also heard a voice say to me, ‘Get up, Peter. Slaughter and eat.’ But I said, ‘Certainly not, sir, because nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’
“But a second time a voice from heaven answered, ‘What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.'”
