Acts 8:18–24

Acts 8:18 — The Spectacle of Power: "When Simon saw that the Holy Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands…" The verb saw (Greek: theáomai) carries the sense of beholding something as a spectacle — fitting for a man whose entire former identity was built on performing wonders before an audience (cf. Acts 8:9–11). Simon is still operating within the categories of a professional wonder-worker: he observes a visible effect (recipients speaking in tongues, prophesying, or otherwise manifesting spiritual gifts) and immediately calculates its market value. His perception is not wrong about what is happening — he correctly identifies that the apostles are the channel — but catastrophically wrong about what it is. He sees a technique where there is a sacrament.

Acts 8:19 — The Demand and Its Presumption: "Give me also this power, that whomever I lay my hands on may receive the Holy Spirit." Simon asks for power (exousían) — authority, capacity, control. His grammar is telling: he wants the ability to dispense the Spirit at his own discretion, to possess the gift as a personal tool. The request assumes that apostolic power is transferable for a fee, that it belongs to Peter and John as a tradeable commodity. This is the root error of all simony: treating what is God's as though it were a human possession to be bought, sold, or inherited by human means.

Acts 8:20 — Peter's Curse: "May your silver perish with you." The Greek (tò argýrion sou sùn soì eíē eis apṓleian) is a powerful optative — a formal curse in the tradition of Old Testament prophetic imprecation. Peter does not negotiate or soften the condemnation. The phrase "gift of God" (dōreán toû theoû) echoes the deepest language of grace in the New Testament (cf. John 4:10; Romans 6:23). To attempt to purchase it is not merely impious but self-destructive: the silver would drag Simon into ruin with it, because it would bind him to a system of value utterly incompatible with the Kingdom.

Acts 8:21 — Exclusion from Lot and Part: "You have neither part nor lot in this matter." The language of meros (part) and klēros (lot) is Old Testament inheritance language — it evokes the distribution of the Promised Land among the tribes of Israel (cf. Deuteronomy 12:12; Joshua 14:4). To have "no part or lot" is to be outside the covenant inheritance entirely. Peter is not merely scolding Simon; he is pronouncing a kind of spiritual disinheritance. The diagnosis: "your heart isn't right before God." The Greek eutheia (straight, upright) implies Simon's inner orientation is crooked — the precise opposite of what John the Baptist called Israel to when he proclaimed the "straight paths" of the Lord (Luke 3:4–5).

Acts 8:22 — The Call to Repentance: Remarkably, Peter does not abandon Simon to his curse. "Repent therefore of this, your wickedness, and ask God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you." The phrase "if perhaps" (ei ára) is not a statement of God's unwillingness to forgive but a reflection of the gravity of Simon's condition — his repentance itself seems uncertain given the depth of his corruption. The word ponēría (wickedness) is strong; it is the abstract noun for evil of character. Yet Peter still opens the door. Repentance remains possible.

Acts 8:23 — Poison and Bondage: "The poison of bitterness and the bondage of iniquity." This double image — drawn from Deuteronomy 29:18 (the root bearing gall and wormwood) and Isaiah 58:6 (the bonds of iniquity) — paints Simon's soul as both toxic and enslaved. He is not merely sinning; he is structured in sin, his very interiority organized around corruption. The word cholē (gall/bile) in Deuteronomy's context refers specifically to apostasy from the covenant; Peter is identifying Simon's error as nothing less than a form of covenant betrayal.

Acts 8:24 — An Ambiguous Response: Simon's reply — "Pray for me… that none of the things you have spoken happen to me" — is notably self-focused. He asks for intercession not from love of God or sorrow for sin, but from fear of punishment. He asks Peter to pray for him rather than praying himself. The Church Fathers (notably Origen and Eusebius) debated whether Simon ever truly repented; later tradition associates him with founding Gnostic heresies. His response here, though it acknowledges Peter's authority, does not constitute the metánoia Peter demanded.

Catholic tradition has drawn from this passage one of its most consequential moral and canonical categories: simony — the buying or selling of spiritual goods, sacraments, or ecclesiastical offices. The name itself is derived from Simon Magus. The Third Lateran Council (1179), the Council of Trent (Session 25), and canon law (CIC 1983, can. 149 §3; 1380) all condemn simony in terms that echo Peter's rebuke: sacred things are given, not sold, because they belong to God alone.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2121) defines simony as "acquiring spiritual goods or things connected with spiritual goods for money" and calls it "a perversion of holiness." It extends the condemnation beyond money to any transaction that treats what is sacred as a commodity — including ecclesiastical appointments made for political advantage.

St. Gregory the Great, in his Pastoral Rule (Book I, ch. 1), saw simoniacal clergy as men who had made Peter's own see — the seat of apostolic authority — into a marketplace, inverting the very power Peter exercised here to rebuke Simon. Gregory fought simony throughout his pontificate as perhaps the gravest wound of the Church in his era.

Theologically, Peter's rebuke illuminates the Catholic understanding that the sacramental power transmitted through apostolic laying on of hands (here, Confirmation or the fullness of the Spirit given in it) is an unmerited gift — it flows from the Holy Spirit through the Church, not from human merit or purchase. This is why the Church has always insisted that the minister of sacraments acts in persona Christi, not as a private entrepreneur.

The passage also undergirds the theology of grace as entirely gratuitous (cf. CCC §1996–1998): "Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us." Any attempt to place grace within a human economy of exchange — whether by money, status, or coercion — is not merely immoral but ontologically incoherent. Grace cannot be purchased because it is not a product; it is a participation in the divine life itself.

The sin Simon committed may seem remote — few Catholics today openly attempt to buy sacramental power with cash. But the underlying error is perennially contemporary. Simony appears whenever ministry is sought for prestige, whenever a pastoral role is leveraged for personal influence, whenever a donation to a parish is made with an expectation of spiritual or institutional preferment in return. It appears subtly when Catholics approach the sacraments as transactions — attending Mass to "fulfill an obligation" rather than to encounter the living God — or when they treat access to clergy as a social currency.

Peter's words invite an examination of conscience about our own interior economy: Do I come to God with money in my hand — whether literal currency, moral achievement, or social capital — expecting to purchase His favor? Do I believe grace can be earned or negotiated? And when confronted, like Simon, with my own corrupt motivations, do I ask God to remove the consequences while leaving the heart unchanged?

The call to genuine metanoia — not Simon's fearful "pray that nothing bad happens to me," but a true reorientation of the heart — is the abiding application of this passage for every Catholic.