11 June 2019
Memorial of Saint Barnabas, Apostle
It is with a matter-of-fact tone that the Acts of the Apostles describes the spread of the gospel in the Church’s earliest days. “The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:21). Those who had heard the preaching of the original disciples quickly began to imitate them, spreading the good news even outside Jewish circles. A group of newly made disciples, new Christians from Cyrene and Cyprus, came to Antioch and met with marvelous success. Marvelous, I say, by today’s standards, but by the standards of the early church, it was not especially surprising. As long as “the hand of the Lord was with them,” what else would you expect?
Where is the hand of the Lord today? Why is the Church declining so precipitously in the West? Is God’s hand still with us? If it is not, why not? Have we offended God? Has he withdrawn his hand from us or have we withdrawn ourselves from him? Something is not right. Something needs to be fixed.
“The Lord’s right hand is raised” (Psalm 118:16a), therefore, to find God’s hand we must look up in prayer. If God chooses to bare his holy arm (cf. Isaiah 52:10), we must then dispose ourselves to function as instruments, because “the Lord’s right hand works valiantly” (Psalm 118:16). I believe that Psalm 118:16 is just as true now as it ever was. When we seek God’s hand in prayer, and when he chooses to bare his arm to us, and when we dispose ourselves to serve as God’s instruments, then God will work valiantly. The gospel will spread. If, God forbid, on the contrary, we replace God’s hand with our own, we can be assured, with a plain and matter-of-fact tone, that Christianity will perish utterly in the West.