Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter
In today’s first reading, Paul and Barnabas enter the town of Lystra and begin preaching the Gospel to the inhabitants of that town. In the midst of their preaching, Paul spots a man who has been crippled from birth. Paul recognizes that the man has the faith to be healed and so tells him to stand. The man is healed and is able to walk around. This astonishes the people of the town, and they think that Paul and Barnabas are two gods who have come to town. They even try to offer a sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas. Paul and Barnabas for their part have a hard time convincing the people that they are not gods, but rather that it is through the power of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that they were able to heal the man.
For our part, I think we may be more astonished by the response of the people to the healing than we are by the healing. To us the response looks extreme and even comical. Probably most of us feel we are above such a response to our fellow human beings. The antidote to that notion is to consider how our culture responds to our various celebrities. We certainly put them on a pedestal and fawn over them almost as much as the townspeople did for Paul and Barnabas. And we do this for far less reason. Hopefully, none of us fall into that sort of hero worship, but we should probably think a little more kindly about the people of Lystra.
We might also want to look at our relative complacency about the miracle we hear about in the reading. After all, God still works miracles for us today. Part of the process of canonizing a new saint is to identify a miracle that occurs through their intercession. So every time a new saint is canonized another miracle is shown to have occurred. We should read up on these and let them touch our hearts and increase our faith and our trust in God’s care for us.
Reflection by Fr. Aquinas Keusenkothen, OSB
Posted in Article for Easter, Daily Reflections