Homily for Tuesday, Week 4 of Easter

Homily for Tuesday
4th Week of Easter

April 28, 2026
Acts 11: 19-26
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

St. Barnabas, by an anonymous
18th-century Lombard artist

We saw last week that persecution in Jerusalem led to the spread of the Gospel to Samaria and to an Ethiopian court official.  Today reaches Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, and in Antioch, the 3d city of the Empire, the Word of God is preached also to Gentiles.  Christianity is on the verge of transformation from Jewish sect like the Pharisees or the Essenes to embracing the whole world, as Jesus commanded before his ascension (Matt 28:19).

According to tradition, Luke was from Antioch.  If that’s true, he’s a firsthand witness to the transformation’s beginnings, as he’ll later be to its development on Paul’s missionary journeys.

Our reading re-introduces Barnabas, who’s already been described as a generous man (Acts 4:36-37) and a sponsor of Saul, the recent convert (9:27).  Now, as a Cypriot, he’s sent as an envoy to Antioch, where his compatriots have been such daring evangelists.  Jerusalem, the mother Church, is concerned for her daughters in the provinces and acts like a provincial sending out an extraordinary visitor.

Presumably Barnabas has kept in touch with his protégé Saul.  He must have seen his potential, based on Saul’s earlier, passionate preaching (9:20-22,28-29).  Now, he brings him out of his seclusion in Tarsus and sets him going on the mission (11:25-26) God had in mind when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus (9:6,15-16).

God’s plans evolve slowly, and they evolve with the cooperation of a lot of people—good men like Barnabas and even persecutors—people who may not be aware of their part in the plans or grasp their part only vaguely, like the anonymous evangelizers “who had been scattered by the persecution” (11:19) and the anonymous Cypriots and Cyrenians who “began to speak to the Greeks as well” (11:20).

In the large picture, we too are among the anonymous evangelizers.  We’ll be mostly unknown a century from now, just names in a necrology or pictures in the files.  But so long as we do our best to be “good men, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith” (11:24), God will remember us and our little labors to spread the Good News of Jesus.  For that we’re grateful to Jesus and his Father.