Author: admin

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Acts 18: 1-8

Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.
There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus,
who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla
because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.
He went to visit them and, because he practiced the same trade,
stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.
Every sabbath, he entered into discussions in the synagogue,
attempting to convince both Jews and Greeks.

When Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia,
Paul began to occupy himself totally with preaching the word,
testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus.
When they opposed him and reviled him,
he shook out his garments and said to them,
“Your blood be on your heads!
I am clear of responsibility.
From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”
So he left there and went to a house
belonging to a man named Titus Justus, a worshiper of God;
his house was next to a synagogue.
Crispus, the synagogue official, came to believe in the Lord
along with his entire household, and many of the Corinthians
who heard believed and were baptized.

The Word of the Lord.

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“Paul sailed for Syria, together with Priscilla and Aquila.”

In our first reading, Paul is on the move again. He’s been preaching the Gospel across Greece, Syria, even as far as Asia.  

Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Luke, Priscilla and Aquila — are just a few of the people who accompanied him on his journeys. 

Imagine how much harder Paul’s life would have been if he had to preach the Gospel without such companions. Those sleepless nights on ships, in tents, in a stranger’s home, even in prison, could have been terribly lonesome otherwise. 

Paul understood an important lesson in life, and certainly in priestly ministry: friends are essential.

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True friends support us. They listen to our struggles; they pray for us; and stick by our side through the good and hard times. 

Do I have that type of friend? Is the Lord calling me to be that kind of friend for another?

As it’s written in the Book of Sirach: “Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter. Whoever finds one finds a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond price; no amount can balance their worth.”

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May Paul and his companions, pray for us.

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Image credits: (1) BBC (2) Charlestown Road church of Christ (3) Pinterest

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Acts: 17:15, 22 – 18:1

After Paul’s escorts had taken him to Athens,
they came away with instructions for Silas and Timothy
to join him as soon as possible.

Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said:
“You Athenians, I see that in every respect
you are very religious.
For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines,
I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’
What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and all that is in it,
the Lord of heaven and earth,
does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands,
nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything.
Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.
He made from one the whole human race
to dwell on the entire surface of the earth,
and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions,
so that people might seek God,
even perhaps grope for him and find him,
though indeed he is not far from any one of us.
For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’
as even some of your poets have said,
‘For we too are his offspring.’
Since therefore we are the offspring of God,
we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image
fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.
God has overlooked the times of ignorance,
but now he demands that all people everywhere repent
because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world
with justice’ through a man he has appointed,
and he has provided confirmation for all
by raising him from the dead.”

When they heard about resurrection of the dead,
some began to scoff, but others said,
“We should like to hear you on this some other time.”
And so Paul left them.
But some did join him, and became believers.
Among them were Dionysius,
a member of the Court of the Areopagus,
a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

After this he left Athens and went to Corinth.

The Word of the Lord.

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Athens was one of the most diverse cities in the ancient world. It was a city of intellects – and a city of gods. 

There were so many gods that some used to say, “In Athens, it is easier to meet a god than a person.”

Perhaps you’ve seen the famous temple where the gods were worshiped, the Parthenon, located smack dab in the heart of Athens. 

There, people could offer sacrifices to any god they wanted – to the gods of the sky, the sea, even the underworld. Interestingly, there was also an altar titled, “To the Unknown God.” 

The Greeks wisely believed they could not box-in the Divine. God was bigger than they could imagine.

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Enter Saint Paul.

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Imagine him standing in the shadow of the Parthenon, preaching about Jesus Christ. Jesus is the “Unknown God,” the one through whom everything and everyone was created. 

As Paul writes in his Letter to the Colossians, “All things were created through him; all things were created for him; he is before all else that is. In him everything continues in being.”

If the Greeks wanted to worship God in his fullness, Paul argues, then they had to worship Jesus. Amazingly, some convert, becoming part of that second generation of Christians.

Paul’s success was driven by three things: he had faith in humanity. He believed every person longed to know the Truth – and Paul could lead them to it.

He understood the scriptures. He was able to argue logically about why Jesus is LORD. 

Most importantly, his actions spoke louder than his words. Paul was courageous, risking humiliation, rejection, even death on multiple occasions for the sake of souls. 

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If someone asked us for a logical argument about why we’re Christian, what might we say? 

And, more importantly, how do we live that faith we profess?

Saint Paul, pray for us.

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Image credits: (1) Vine Christian Centre (2) Saint Paul Preaching at Athens, Raphael (3) I’m Listening to God, WordPress

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Acts: 16:22-34

The crowd in Philippi joined in the attack on Paul and Silas,
and the magistrates had them stripped
and ordered them to be beaten with rods.
After inflicting many blows on them,
they threw them into prison
and instructed the jailer to guard them securely.
When he received these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell
and secured their feet to a stake.

About midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying
and singing hymns to God as the prisoners listened,
there was suddenly such a severe earthquake
that the foundations of the jail shook;
all the doors flew open, and the chains of all were pulled loose.
When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open,
he drew his sword and was about to kill himself,
thinking that the prisoners had escaped.
But Paul shouted out in a loud voice,
“Do no harm to yourself; we are all here.”
He asked for a light and rushed in and,
trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.
Then he brought them out and said,
“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus
and you and your household will be saved.”
So they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to everyone in his house.
He took them in at that hour of the night and bathed their wounds;
then he and all his family were baptized at once.
He brought them up into his house and provided a meal
and with his household rejoiced at having come to faith in God.

The Word of the Lord.

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There’s an old Swedish proverb: “Those who wish to sing always find a song.”  

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In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Silas have been humiliated, stripped in public, and beaten with rods. 

Now they’re imprisoned and chained to the ground deep inside the bowels of the earth, facing the imminent possibility of death. Why are they singing songs to God at midnight?

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Paul and Silas have discovered a higher freedom, one that cannot be chained – the freedom of knowing Jesus Christ. 

This is a great, almost original, Pauline insight – that in the midst of suffering, there is always the consolation of the Spirit; there is grace; there is a reason to sing.

“Those who wish to sing always find a song.” 

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While we may never know the darkness of imprisonment, we’ve all endured various trials – dryness in prayer, periods of grief, sickness, anxiety, isolation, or frustration. 

But Paul and Silas remind us, there is always a reason to rejoice, a reason to sing.

As Paul later writes, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? … No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.”

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Those who wish to sing always find a song. 

As Christians, our tune is always one of victory.

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Image credits: (1) QuoteFancy (2) FreePik (3) QuoteFancy