In recent year, our Church has challenged us to a new evangelization, ask us to grow in our faith ourselves, and then to reach out to those on the margins of the faith, to those who perhaps have drifted away from the Church, to those who are not members of a Church community. We know that this is a great challenge for us today, so we can only image what things were like for Paul and the members of the Early Church who travel all over the ancient world, bringing the message of Christ’s Good News.
We know from the account we have been hearing from the Acts of the Apostles during the Easter season that Paul did not have an easy time preaching Christ’s Gospel. Today, we hear how Paul and Silas were stripped, beaten with rods, and thrown into prison. Rather than bemoan their situation, they lift it up to the Lord, singing hymns and praying for the other prisoners to hear. I was quite amused when I heard how Paul and the others remained in the prison after a great earthquake came and provided a means for them to escape. If that had happened in own of the prisons I have visited as a Catholic chaplain, I would imagine those prisoners seeing such an event as a means of escape and as a gift given to them from God. Even the jailer in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles today was converted to the faith by the example of Paul.
We never know how God is going to touch our hearts, do we? I have found so many of the prisoners eager to hear the word of the God when I ministered to them in the prisons. It has been tough for me to not be able to go out to the prisons or to the state mental hospital for our ministry. Hopefully, as our public masses return in our parishes, we will also soon be able to go out to the other locations of our public ministry.
As we reflect upon the message we hear from the Acts of the Apostles today, may we ask God to use as an instrument of his love and mercy in the way we live out the Gospel just as he used Paul and the group of disciples in the Early Church.
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