Please read this passage before reading this homily.
Chapters nine and ten report two miraculous healings of Peter. They also record how he had gone to the house of a centurion and baptized him and his household (At this you should gasp, say, “Oh No!! Say it isn’t so” and be upset). Yes, Peter had gone to “the house of uncircumcised people and ate with them”.
Peter replied that he had had a vision of the whole of creation coming to him and the voice of God declaring the whole of creation clean and not profane. He had come to realize that this vision included people as well as animals and that, therefore, he could go to the house of uncircumcised people and even welcome them into baptism.
This stopped the criticism. The Church, then, welcomed all kinds or European and Asian peoples into its fold. Eventually, new lands and new places were discovered, and the Church has had to learn how to reach out to them.
In our day, there are many people interested in being Christian but feel excluded for many reasons, such as divorced and remarried people, people of different styles of living or with other issues that make them seem different from some members of the Church. Yet, no people are unclean or profane to God. For instance, no Democrat and no Republican are unclean to God because God loves all people regardless of political affiliation, regardless of skin color or language spoken, regardless of the kind of relationships they have, or regardless of any other attribute that leads others to discriminate against people.
After Peter’s explanation of his conduct, the people “stopped objecting and glorified God, saying, “God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.”