Category: Heroic

6/11/2019

St. Barnabas: Advocate and Companion of St. Paul

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For the average modern-day Catholic, one’s familiarity with St. Barnabas probably extends as far as knowing that he was a companion of St. Paul during Paul’s early missionary work. But when I delved deeper into the Acts of the Apostles to learn more about Barnabas, I was surprised to see just how influential he was in the early days of the Church.

He first appears in the Acts of the Apostles 4:36: “Joseph, also named by the apostles Barnabas” sells a piece of his property and donates the money for the Apostles to use. He next appears in Chapter 9, when he takes charge of the newly-converted Paul and introduces him to the twelve Apostles, and later, he brings Paul into the missionary work for the growing, Jewish-and-Gentile-based Christian community at Antioch (in modern-day Turkey). Chapters 13 and 14 could be appropriately nicknamed “The Adventures of Paul & Barnabas,” for they include: an encounter with a false prophet (Acts 13:6-12), having their teachings embraced by Gentiles and just as thoroughly rejected by Jews (Acts 13:44-52), one near-stoning and one nearly-fatal stoning (Acts 14:5-6 and 14:19-20, respectively), and performing a miracle only to be mistaken for incarnations of the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes (Acts 14:8-14). And yet, the Holy Spirit compelled them onward! The next chapters recount more of Sts. Paul and Barnabas’s evangelizing work together and then focus on St. Paul after he and Barnabas went separate ways.

Personally, I had never known that St. Barnabas—whom I had often envisioned as a sort of sidekick to St. Paul’s evangelizing heroics during his early years as a missionary—was actually the man indirectly responsible for Paul’s later renown. It can be difficult to believe that someone has truly changed, and even more difficult to advocate publicly for that person before he has had a chance to ‘prove himself’—and yet that is what Barnabas did. Would Paul ever have been accepted as a ‘true’ Christian if the well-regarded Barnabas had not been there to acknowledge Paul publicly and to put him in touch with the Apostles? How long might it have taken Paul to reach the path of the missionary if Barnabas had not sought him out specifically to assist the efforts in Antioch?

In our modern, post-Christian society, there are many opportunities for us to be the Barnabas to someone else’s Paul. Perhaps it might mean asking for help from someone with a task that could ignite their zeal for the Lord and nurture their God-given talents. Perhaps we can see the potential for someone else’s faith to deepen and for the great things they could accomplish. Or perhaps the opportunities we encounter are chances to be a witness to the truth—even if that witness brings persecution, falls on deaf ears, or we must move on to other places, as Paul and Barnabas did.

As we commemorate the feast of St. Barnabas, let us ask for his intercession in revealing to us how we can most effectively share the Gospel today and invite others into a life of meaningful discipleship.

Question for Reflection: Has anyone ever advocated for you or have you ever been an advocate on someone’s behalf? What was this experience like?
experience like?

Helena Romano is the Editing Associate for the Catholic Apostolate Center.

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8/13/2018

Heroic Love: St. Maximilian Kolbe

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Let’s face it: We live in a world that doesn’t really understand the meaning of love. We hear this word “love” thrown around a lot. There are any number of things we can say that we love in a day: our latest tv show binge, a favorite food, or place that we have travelled. We use this word with such inconsistency that it has begun to lose its meaning.

How often do we succeed at recognizing and paying accolades to these “lesser loves” while failing to acknowledge the people and moments that actually deserve our recognition? All the while we are too easily forgetting Jesus, who is Love made flesh.

The Gospel of John says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” While the world proposes time and time again that we settle for lesser loves, the Gospel promises us that if we want to find our lives - if we want to find love - we must lay ourselves down.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast we celebrate today, exhibited this in a way that was truly heroic. Not only did he defend and promulgate the faith during the height of World War II, but he, in a final act of heroic love, also laid down his life for a man randomly selected to die in a starvation chamber at Auschwitz. When St. Maximilian Kolbe was asked who he was by the Nazi guards, he simply responded: “I am a Catholic priest.”

Maximillian Kolbe’s sacrifice is what the Church calls an act of “redemptive suffering” – suffering which allows and invites us to participate in Christ’s redeeming sacrifice and make manifest the love of God. The Catechism states:

The cross is the unique sacrifice of Christ, the "one mediator between God and men". But because in his incarnate divine person he has in some way united himself to every man, "the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery" is offered to all men. He calls his disciples to "take up [their] cross and follow (him)",[Mt.16:24] for "Christ also suffered for (us), leaving (us) an example so that (we) should follow in his steps."[1Pet.2:21] In fact Jesus desires to associate with his redeeming sacrifice those who were to be its first beneficiaries. This is achieved supremely in the case of his mother, who was associated more intimately than any other person in the mystery of his redemptive suffering.

Because St. Maximilian knew and loved the truth of the Gospels, he was found ministering to others and singing praises to God even as he was being starved to death. Maximilian used his suffering to show his fellow prisoners a God who loves us so much that he gave His life to us on the Cross. His own life provides a powerful example of someone who, even in the midst of horrific circumstances, has so much confidence in Christ that he is able to sing out, “For my yoke is easy, my burden light.”

As Christians in the 21st century, it is our privilege to live lives of heroic love. Although most of us won’t be called to the sufferings of St. Maximilian Kolbe, we are ALL called to show and share love in a way that points others to the love of the Cross.

St. Maximillian Kolbe, pray for us.

Lauren Scharmer is the director of a multi-parish youth ministry program in the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

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St. Barnabas: Advocate and Companion of St. Paul

Heroic Love: St. Maximilian Kolbe

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