Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Today’s first reading from the Book of Acts is one of the most moving in that book. After having been humiliatingly stripped in public, St. Paul and his companion are beaten with wooden rods. Public canings in Asia might be brought to mind when we think of this passage. Being beaten with rods during the Roman period was a brutal affair. After this punishment, they are locked up in prison, not only behind bars, as it were, but also with their ankles tied to a stake.
As St. Peter had been miraculously rescued from prison earlier in Acts, so too now St. Paul and Silas his companion are liberated. The jailer attempts to commit suicide, probably thinking that it is better to die by his own sword than to be brutally and painfully executed by his superiors. Roman law would have stipulated that he be burned to death for the prison break.
But then comes the turn of events. St. Paul stops his enemy, the guard, from killing himself. St. Paul instructs him in the basic gospel message, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you and your household will be saved” (16:31). And how are they saved? Because of the jail guard’s faith, his entire family is baptized at once: spouse, children, any infants, anyone else living under his roof. His family is baptized and thus enters the family of God. The guard who was once at enmity with St. Paul and with Silas, now becomes one with them through baptism. Notice that they did not wait until the larger Christian community could be present to witness the baptism, they went out at night and were baptized immediately.
This highlights the important link between faith and baptism. Believing in the Lord Jesus leads to baptism, just as baptism should lead to faith in the Lord Jesus. If we are baptized, we will receive the Holy Spirit, the “Advocate” Whom in today’s Gospel reading Jesus says He will send (John 16:7). Empowered by this same Spirit, the same Spirit that filled St. Paul and the earliest Christian disciples, we too can love our enemies and work for their conversion. During the rest of this Easter season, let us really strive to believe more firmly in the Lord Jesus, by living the life He has called us to live. Let us take some time to think about ways in which we can love those around us who, even if not real “enemies,” they might be people we still find difficult to love. By emulating St. Paul in this way, we can grow in the knowledge and love of Christ Who has sent us His Spirit so that we might live, and do so abundantly.
- Jeff Morrow