Have you ever felt that you did everything right, prayed, helped those in need, sought God the best way you knew how, and still something seemed to be missing? That was true of Cornelius, a Roman centurion who feared God even before he knew the name of Jesus.
Cornelius commanded soldiers of the Italian Regiment in Caesarea, a port city of Judea. He was a Gentile, a stranger to the faith of Israel, but he prayed regularly and supported the poor of the Jewish community with his alms. The whole region respected him for it.
One day, while he was praying, an angel appeared to Cornelius. The angel said that his prayers and alms had risen as an offering before God, and instructed him to send for a man named Simon Peter in Joppa. Cornelius obeyed at once, sending trusted servants.
While the messengers were traveling, God was preparing Peter with a strange vision: a sheet coming down from heaven, full of animals that the Jewish law considered unclean. The command was clear, do not call impure what God has made clean. Peter did not yet understand the full reach of that vision.
When Peter arrived at Cornelius’s house, he found relatives and close friends gathered, waiting for the message. Cornelius fell at his feet as though before a god, but Peter raised him up, saying that he too was only a man. There the apostle grasped the meaning of the vision: God does not show favoritism.
While Peter was still preaching about Jesus, the Holy Spirit came down on everyone present. The Gentiles received the same gift the Jews had received at Pentecost, and were baptized before the astonished eyes of those who had come with Peter.
The life of Cornelius reminds us that God sees the heart of anyone who sincerely seeks him, even before that person knows the whole gospel. It also shows that no barrier of nation, culture, or religious background can close the door that Christ opened for everyone.