Tuesday,5/13/14
The first
reading tells how persecutions in Jerusalem led the disciples to settle a hundred
miles north of there in Antioch, the former capitol of the Syrian Empire. It
was there that the first followers of Christ came to be called “Christians.” When
many Gentiles joined those Jewish Christians, the Apostles appointed a very
kind man, Barnabas, to go lead them.
After
Barnabas got to Antioch, and he had sized up the situation, it occurred to him
that the perfect man to help him with the Gentile converts was St. Paul.
Now, Paul, or
Saul, after his conversion on the road to Damascus, and after his going up to
Jerusalem to check out his beliefs with the Apostles, had retired to Tarsus. It
was a town in what today would be
southeast Turkey. There his father was a maker of tents.
If you check
out Chapter One of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, you will read his account of
his conversion, followed by his visit to Jerusalem, and next his retiring to
Tarsus. Then, if you read on to verse one of Chapter Two of Paul’s Letter to
the Galatians, you might be as surprised as I was when you read, “Then after fourteen years I again went
up to Jerusalem with Barnabas.”
For fourteen
years Paul had helped his father, while he silently went over and over his
beliefs as a Christian.
With many
people their favorite passage from Paul’s Letters is Chapter Thirteen of his
First Letter to the Corinthians where he says, “If I speak with the tongues of angels and men, but do not have love, I
am a resounding gong and a tinkling cymbal.” But there are dozens of other
passages that we prize as highly.
If we marvel
over Paul’s ability to come up with such perfect phrasing, it might help us to
realize that his deep perceptions and his gorgeous wording were the result of
his pondering over these holy matters for fourteen years.
The lesson
there is that we must hold our tongues while we spend years and years asking
for help in knowing the truth.
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