Paul and his companions did not have an easy time preaching the Good News of Jesus in their travels throughout the ancient world. We hear this time and time again in the stories from the Acts of the Apostles. Paul and his companion Silas cured a young girl who was possessed by an unclean spirit, but since she used that spirit to tell the future and to earn money for her masters, her masters pressed charges against Paul and Silas when their money-making scheme was threatened, accusing them of disturbing the peace and breaking the Roman laws.
Paul and Silas were stripped, beaten with rods, and thrown into prison. Rather than being angry and frustrated with their situation, they lifted it up to the Lord, singing hymns and praying for the other prisoners to hear. It tickled me when I heard how Paul, Silas and the other prisoners remained in the prison after a great earthquake came and provided a means for them to escape. I thought about the prisoners whom I have ministered to in the federal and state prisons here in Mississippi throughout the years; they would have burst out of that prison with joy as fast as they could when faced with a situation like this, seeing this means of escape as a golden opportunity and as a gift given to them by God. But, rather, both the prisoners and the jailers are touched by the word of God that Paul and Silas preached, and they came to believe.
Sharing of our faith is an important part of who we are as disciples of Christ. All of us as disciples of Christ are to call our faith to others, to open their hearts to Christ, just as our popes have been calling us to do in the new evangelization in the Church. We never can tell whose lives we will be able to touch in the process.
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