Catholic Commentary
The Apostles Return to Jerusalem, Evangelizing Samaritan Villages
25They therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the Good News to many villages of the Samaritans.
Acts 8:25 describes Peter and John returning to Jerusalem after testifying and speaking God's word to Samaritan believers, and preaching the Good News to many Samaritan villages along their route. The verse emphasizes the apostles' evangelistic mission extended beyond major cities into rural settlements, fulfilling Christ's commission to witness throughout Judea and Samaria.
The apostles refused to let a return journey go unredeemed—turning the road itself into mission, one overlooked village at a time.
There is also a striking reversal: in Luke 9:51–56, James and John had wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village that refused Jesus hospitality. Now John — the same John — walks willingly through Samaritan villages offering not fire but the word of life. Apostolic conversion is not only the conversion of one's hearers; it is the ongoing conversion of the apostle himself.
The Apostolic Office and the Imperative of Mission
Catholic tradition sees in this verse a vivid illustration of the apostolic munus praedicandi — the duty of preaching that belongs to the ordained apostolic office. The Second Vatican Council's Ad Gentes (n. 5) teaches that the Church "is missionary by her very nature," and Acts 8:25 shows this not as an abstract principle but as flesh-and-blood itinerant labor. The apostles do not return home via the shortest route; the mission shapes the route.
St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on Acts (Homily 18), marvels at the diligence of Peter and John: "They did not regard the way as an excuse for rest, but made even the road itself productive of benefit." This patristic insight — that the apostle has no "off-duty" hours — resonates with the Catechism's teaching that Baptism itself confers a share in Christ's prophetic office (CCC 904), making every baptized person responsible for testimony.
The phrase "the word of the Lord" connects to the Catholic understanding of Scripture and Tradition as the single deposit of faith (CCC 80–81). The apostles preach not their own ideas but ton lógon tou Kyríou — a word received, entrusted, and now transmitted. This is the very structure of Sacred Tradition: tradere, to hand on.
Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium (n. 20), calls every Christian to "go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the 'peripheries' in need of the light of the Gospel." The Samaritan villages of Acts 8:25 are precisely such peripheries — ethnic, geographic, religious. The apostles' willingness to evangelize them enacts what Francis calls the "missionary option" at the heart of authentic Catholic discipleship.
Acts 8:25 challenges the contemporary Catholic at a very practical level: mission is not a program but a posture. Peter and John did not schedule a Samaritan village outreach; they simply refused to let a journey go unredeemed. Every transit — commute, errand, family visit — is potential apostolic ground.
More pointedly, Luke notes it was villages they evangelized: small, unremarkable, easily overlooked communities. The temptation in modern Catholic parish life is to concentrate resources on high-visibility initiatives while the "villages" — nursing homes, immigrant neighborhoods, rural towns, the lapsed relative at the dinner table — receive nothing. This verse is a quiet rebuke to that tendency.
For Catholics discerning how to live out their baptismal witness, the pattern here is instructive: first they testified (personal witness), then they spoke the word (explicit proclamation). Both movements are necessary. A Catholicism of mere good example without kerygma, or of bold proclamation without lived witness, is incomplete. The apostles modeled the integration of the two — and did so among people their own tradition had long dismissed.
Commentary
Acts 8:25 — Literal and Narrative Analysis
Acts 8:25 functions as a transitional hinge in Luke's missionary narrative. Peter and John were sent from Jerusalem specifically to respond to Philip's prior evangelization of Samaria (Acts 8:14). They came, they prayed, they laid hands on the new believers, and the Spirit fell. Now their mission complete, they return — but Luke's Greek is carefully crafted: the participle diamartyrámenoi ("having testified/borne solemn witness") paired with lalḗsantes ton lógon tou Kyríou ("having spoken the word of the Lord") frames their entire Samaritan sojourn as one unified act of apostolic testimony before the return journey is even mentioned. The testimony was not incidental — it was the defining character of their presence.
The phrase ton lógon tou Kyríou — "the word of the Lord" — is a Lukan technical expression (appearing across Luke-Acts) that carries the full weight of the resurrection kerygma. It is not merely religious instruction but the authoritative proclamation that Jesus is risen Lord. Peter and John have not just administered a sacramental rite (the laying on of hands in 8:17); they have spoken this word, integrating sacrament and proclamation.
Then comes the detail that electrifies the verse: on the return journey, euḗggelizonto pollas kōmas tōn Samaritōn — they evangelized "many villages of the Samaritans." The plural kōmas (villages, as opposed to poleis, cities) is significant. Philip had evangelized the Samaritan city (Acts 8:5), presumably Sychar or a major urban center. Peter and John now take the word into the rural hinterland — the kōmai, small agricultural settlements — on their way back north toward Jerusalem. Mission does not wait for a convenient moment; the road itself becomes the apostolic field.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Samaritans carry deep typological resonance in Luke-Acts. They are the "half-breed" people, descendants of those left behind after the Assyrian deportation (722 BC), mixing Israelite lineage with pagan settlers (2 Kgs 17:24–41). They worshiped on Mount Gerizim rather than Jerusalem, were despised by mainstream Judaism, and yet — in a pattern that runs through Luke's Gospel — they are paradigmatic recipients of divine mercy. The Good Samaritan (Luke 10), the grateful Samaritan leper (Luke 17:11–19), and Jesus' word to the Samaritan woman (John 4) all build toward this moment in Acts 8: the Spirit breaks every ethnic boundary. The apostolic return journey through Samaritan villages is the fulfillment of the Risen Christ's own commission in Acts 1:8 — "You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." The mission expands in concentric rings; Samaria is the second ring, now being saturated.