Please read this passage before reading this homily.
Things happened fast in the Acts of the Apostles from chapter 8 to the 12th. Saul was a leader of the persecutors. When he persecuted, many believers in Jesus had become refugees and fled Jerusalem, talking with them their faith in the risen Christ. The persecution ended with Paul’s conversion.
Luke tells us several examples of the aftermath of the persecution. Phillip baptized a eunuch in a carriage and Peter healed a paralytic and raised a dead woman to life. Peter than visited a Roman army officer. Barnabas worked with the program in Antioch and the number of believers so increased that he went looking for Saul to help him. Saul and Barnabas took a relief mission down to Jerusalem because of a famine. They returned to Antioch. Today’s reading picks up the story here.
It is at Antioch that Saul and Barnabas were called to take the gospel beyond Antioch. The text makes it very clear that the Holy Spirit was in charge. The Holy Spirit had them called to service and the Holy Spirit sent them on their mission.
If the Holy Spirit is the instigator of this mission of Saul and Barnabas, the Holy Spirit must also have been the instigator of the whole process that made the Greek-speaking Jewish believers in Jesus refugees from Jerusalem and migrants to Samaria and Antioch. If this is the case, then we should be seeing the action of the Holy Spirit in our own lives in the many changes we have had in our lives. It is our challenge to see the Holy Spirit at work n the signs of our times.