Reflection Acts 14:5-18

 

A reflection on Acts 14:5-18 (1st Reading 5/8/23, Monday of the 5th Week of Easter)

Who are we to stand against God’s plans?  Who are we to question God’s infinite wisdom?  As the psalmist says:

As a father pities his children,

so the LORD pities those who fear him.

For he knows our frame;

he knows that we are dust.

(Psalms 103:13-14)

While me must acknowledge our lowliness compared to His majesty, we also rejoice in knowing that, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him…” (Genesis 1:27).  While we must be humble servants of the Lord we must also be bold heralds of the Gospel.  In this passage of Acts we first hear of the crowd of both Jews and Gentiles that try to kill Paul and Barnabas by stoning them in Iconium.  Despite this, and other attacks, they continue spreading the Good News in Lystra and Derbe.  We read in this part of Acts of the man healed by Paul.  Paul sees the man’s faith and calls to him, “Stand up.”  How many times have we read of Jesus doing the same in the Gospels?  How many times has a well known invalid been commanded by Christ?  This must have seemed absurd to those who watched, as with this case, this man was, “...lame from birth, who had never walked.”  But we know this is precisely how God works.  These healings could not have been faked, as skeptics would have liked to believe, a man could not simply have been brought, appeared to be crippled and then “miraculously healed” by Jesus or his Apostles.  Known criples, known unclean or possessed persons, healed in their physical bodies and healed in their souls.  Paul did not heal this man just to heal him, but he, “...looked intently at him, saw that he had the faith to be healed, and called out…”  Conversion is a key element in these healings, from this man in Lystra to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), she is sent away cleansed and made a witness, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.  Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:29).  

Now, do we have the faith or the courage to act when we receive our call to “Stand up”?  We cannot doubt, we must see God’s goodness everywhere and be fueled by this to know that he works in us and around us.  In this passage we read further, “...yet, in bestowing his goodness, he did not leave himself without witness, for he gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filled you with nourishment and gladness for your hearts.”  Now this refutation comes from Paul and Barnabas when the crowds attempt to worship them and make sacrifices.  We have the luxury of not being as blind as these peoples were for we have already heard the Good News and already have these examples to learn from.  But we must take this knowledge, take this faith that has been handed on to us and be ready to stand up, we must be ready to live, breathe, defend and protect our faith.  

While Paul and Barnabas escaped many brushes with death along their travels they would ultimately go on to win the martyr's crown for their faith.  Paul, once one of the greatest persecutors of the early Church, responsible for the death of St. Stephen, the protomartyr, would ultimately give his life for Christ and the Gospel around the same time as St. Peter.  Barnabas would also be martyred for the faith.  If their deaths had been in vain, then we would not be recounting their stories two thousand years later.  St. Paul’s apostolic journeys covered thousands of miles and started over a dozen churches.  We recount his correspondence with these churches in the Pauline Epistles.  From these seeds planted by Paul and the other Apostles on their journeys grew the Church as we see it today proclaimed far and wide, still trying to grow, still trying to survive and still spreading the same Gospel.

While it has been said that the 20th Century produced more martyrs for the Church than all of the centuries combined, we likely do not run the risk of being asked to make that leap on a daily basis.  But we must still be ready to defend and protect our faith on an intellectual and spiritual level.  We must be willing to embody that faith, handed on to us through the centuries, and we must be ready to stand up when we are called.  We read in an Epistle from St. Peter, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world.” (1 Peter 8-9).  At the time, the Church Universal was much smaller, not fragmented and denominationalized as it is today, but it was wholly being persecuted.  Today as people of faith, we find our values, our morals and our beliefs coming under attack.  The Christian way of life is very much under attack as it was in the early days of the Church.  Christian identity then was defined by actions, by a particular way of living that stood athwart the secular norms.  We are very much encouraged by society to go along with the flow and assimilate to today’s norms.  But to assimilate and go with the flow is something Christians have never and should never do.  We are called, as followers of Christ to be in the world but not of the world.  We must Christify the world around us.  One of the dismissals from Mass, perhaps seldom used, commands us, “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”  This is a call to stand up, this is a call to action, if Paul were to look at us today, would he see the same faith he saw in the crippled man?  Would Paul look at us and say, “Stand up!” or would he pass us by and find us lacking in that faith?