Some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead.20 But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe.
He was left behind as a corpse. This is how badly the stoning went. When the disciples came to pick up the pieces he got up and returned into the city -kind of shaking the dust off as if nothing really had happened. The next day he was in the way again.
21 They preached the gospel in that city and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch,
Paul not only did not run away or hide himself after being stoned but returned to the very territory of his attackers, back to Lystra, to Iconium and to Antioch. And we are told this itinerary in successive verses, which means that things happened one after the other; we are not talking about going back years later.
22 strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said.
I ask myself today, what kind of hardships am I willing and ready to go through in order to remain true to the faith and the Kingdom. Something to ponder and to pray about.
One of the Intercessions of Morning Prayer read this morning: Christ our Savior ... make us witnesses to your risen life. What a wonderful example of this witnessing we have in the passage of St. Paul quoted before.
Paul's kind of courage in the face of persecution is a clear witness to the power of Jesus' Resurrection. Paul went to the desert for several years after his conversion and in the struggle of fighting his demons he surrendered his very life and being to God and became, truly, a Living Memory of Jesus, and His Apostle. This is the witness to the Risen Christ that, as Christians, we all are invited to give with our lives today too.
In our troubled times we are, again, getting almost daily news of persecutions and martyrdom, whether in India, Egypt, China or in our own countries. In some places churches are being attacked and burned, and Christians martyred. In other places teachers and doctors are removed from their jobs because they teach that abortion is murder or refuse to perform one. We may not be in those situations but maybe can think of a neighbor or a family member who is in need of a hand.
Like Paul we too need to shake the dust off our comfortable souls and pray in earnest for our own conversion, for the healing of our blindness that prevents us from seeing Jesus in our brothers and sisters, and for the the grace to come so close to Jesus as to truly become witnesses to His risen life.
Let us pray for each other as we request the intercession of Mary, Help of Christians, to bring to birth in our lives the passion for God that will make us Living Memories of Jesus, the Risen Christ.
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