Saturday of the 5th Sunday of Easter 2023
St. Paul’s mission to the Jews and the Gentiles took him several times into the Roman province of Asia, an area we now assign to Turkey. The area of Mysia, which is just south of the Sea of Marmora, has in it the city of Troas, which is close to the ancient city of Troy. Enough geography for now. It gets important to St. Luke very quickly.
So first thing, why–after Paul had gotten assurance from Peter and James and the other in Jerusalem that new Christians didn’t need to be circumcised as Jews, with Baptism taking its place–why did Paul circumcise Timothy? Was he trying to backtrack on his teaching? Not at all. Paul had it in mind that Timothy would help him bring the Gospel to both Jew and Gentile, and the way he did it was to come to a town, go to the synagogue or other place Jews met, and preach there. That was usually a place that excluded Gentiles like Timothy, whose Christian mother and maybe even grandmother had stood in the way of his circumcision at birth. So to establish Tim’s Jewish credentials for the future, he had him circumcised. Just that simple–nothing should stand in the way of spreading the Word of God and sacraments.
In Mysia, it appears that Paul had intended to go north to Bithynia, which is on the south shore of the Black Sea. The Spirit prevented that. What does that mean? It was probably not a vision, because a few days later a vision or dream prompted Paul to go across to Macedonia. Paul’s band was probably in prayer and one or two of the prophets who were with Paul stood and spoke those words: the Holy Spirit did not want Paul to go to Bithynia, but had other missions for him. We know that the result was the evangelization of all of Greece, which became a Christian hot zone. Nothing could stand or be allowed to stand in the way of spreading the Christian gospel.
Jesus taught the Church to value that principle. When He uses the term “the world,” as He speaks to us, Jesus is really referring to anyone outside the Church who is not yet open to accepting the Gospel. So nothing we do should make that problem worse. The world–the culture of the West these days–is bound to fear and despise us because we profess teachings that they have rejected or are suspicious of. For instance, we say that Truth is Truth, and that Truth is a person, Jesus Christ. To accept Christ means to accept His way of life, which is the way of Love, defined as giving of oneself for others until it hurts. Jesus gave until it killed Him, didn’t He. People want to define their own truth today, and that often means they want to do whatever makes them feel good or better, whether it’s fornication or abortion or theft or perjury. In other words, it’s a yard sign saying “love is love.” Jesus specifies that the irreducible minimum of love is keeping the Ten Commandments, and they are not suggestions.
When Jesus and His teaching stood in the way of the Jewish and Roman world, the leaders there first resisted Him, and ultimately murdered Him. But His Resurrection defied that treatment and set the Church in motion to spread the true Gospel of Christ, of self-giving Love, all over the world. Yet the world still resists and persecutes those who live and teach Christ’s Truth. Are we better than Christ? You know the answer. So we continue to follow His lead, and rejoice if we find ourselves cast out, ignored, cancelled or even put to death. Serve the Lord with gladness and at our deaths, we shall come before Him singing for joy.
