St Barnabas is the saint we celebrate today. He has a very interesting story from the days of the Early Church. Barnabas was not one of the original group of apostles, but he is about as close to them as you can get. He was a Jew from Cyprus who was a companion of St Paul. Barnabas is the one who introduced Paul to Peter and the other apostles. He served as a kind of mediator between Paul, a former persecutor of the followers of Jesus, and the still suspicious Jewish Christians. When a Christian community was formed in the important city of Antioch, Barnabas was sent there as the official representative of the Church in Jerusalem to bring them under the umbrella of the Early Church. Barnabas and Paul spent a year in Antioch nurturing the Christian community there, bringing back contributions from Antioch to the Church in Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas later returned to Antioch to preach the Gospels to the Gentiles there. We hear about Barnabas’ story in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles today. Barnabas is the patron saint of the country of Cyprus, of the city of Antioch, and of peacemakers. Even though all of this sounds like a nice story, we know that Barnabas and Paul faced many challenges and controversies, including Christian communities experiencing a lot of division and discord, as well as a relationship with the mother Church in Jerusalem that could often be tense and heated. May Barnabas be an inspiration to us in the challenges that we face today in our modern world today. May we unite our prayers with the intercession of St Barnabas on his feast day.
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