Tuesday. 4/28/15
After
St. Stephen was stoned to death in Jerusalem a general persecution broke out,
and a good number of Christian Jews moved two hundred miles north to the Syrian
city of Antioch. It was there that we came to be called Christians. Our first
reading today tells us that Jews from the island of Cyprus and from the
Egyptian port of Cyrene who had settled in Antioch had embraced the Faith.
Following on that, those converts began bringing Gentile friends into the
Church.
looked
for a man who could represent them there. They settled on Barnabas, and they
had three reasons for that choice. First, he had standing, since he was a
Jewish priest. Next, as a man from the isle of Cyprus, he could mix with
foreigners. Lastly, although his real name was Joseph, he had been
nicknamed Barnabas, which literally means “Son of kindness.”
On
setting out for Antioch Barnabas thought of Saul of Tarsus as the perfect companion
for him in dealing with a mixture of Jews, Gentiles, and men from many
different ports.
The last
we heard about Saul, or St. Paul, was the story of his conversion on the road
to Damascus. However, recently in rereading Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, I
came across his own account of the years between his conversion and that visit
from Barnabas. I was surprised to read that after his conversion he spent three
years around Damascus before going to meet Peter in Jerusalem. But what stunned
me to read was that after visiting with Peter he returned to his father’s house
in the Turkish town of Tarsus, and he spent fourteen years there.
In
reading Paul’s letters I have come to regard him as perhaps the smartest man
who ever lived. The depth of his ideas is matched with the beauty of his words.
At first I was thinking of those fourteen years at his father’s house as a
waste of a marvelous talent.
Now,
though, I see those silent years as having been necessary for Paul. The depths
of insights and the beauty of phrasing we find in his letters to the
Corinthians and the Colossians were all carefully worked over hundreds of times
in his years of silent prayer.
It is
the same with us. Our most productive hours are the ones we spend in silent
communion with God.
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