May 10, 2024 – Friday of the 6th Week of Easter
Acts 18, 9-18; John 16, 20-23
H O M I L Y
Dear Brothers,
The Bible is the Word of God transmitted to us in human words. Each book has a human author who shares with us his experience of God, in his own human words, according to his own preoccupations and in his own style. Likewise, the history of the beginnings of the Church that we find in the Acts of the Apostles is the human history of a little group of people who lived out their Christian faith in their own human life -- most of the time a rather normal human life. During the last few weeks, the first reading at Mass gave us an idea of the human relationships and at times the human tensions within the early Church. We saw how Barnabas, at the beginning of the predication in Antioch, went to fetch Paul in Tarsus, a move that certainly influenced dramatically the history of the Church forever. They worked together for a while and then Paul separated from Barnabas and recruited Silas. In yesterday’s first reading, we saw Paul arriving in Athens, looking for a place where to stay and for a job to earn his bread. In today’s reading, we see his difficulties with the Jews of Athens, and his first difficulties with the Roman courts, which, for this time end rather well for him.