BEARING THE PAINS OF A LOSS - C: 5th Sun in Easter

First Reading: Acts 14:21-27 (15 May 2022)

“It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

These are the words of comfort uttered by Paul and Barnabas when they revisited the Jesus-believers in Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch (v. 21). Here, they “strengthened the souls of the[se] disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith” (v. 22). The apostles said so because these converts saw firsthand how it is to be a follower of Jesus:

one could be rejected, persecuted, and put to death by the Jewish authorities as what Paul and Barnabas experienced.

Accordingly, in Antioch, “for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people” (11:24). The new disciples here must have already learned that James was put to death by Herod (cf. 12:2) and that Peter was imprisoned (cf. 12:4-10), albeit miraculously released by an angel of the Lord (vv. 7-8). In Iconium, “Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. They spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed” (14:1). However, there were some Jews here who spread false rumors about the two, dividing the crowd (v. 4) between those who believe them and those who do not—they eventually attempted to stone them to death (v. 5). Finally, in Lystra, Paul was sensational in healing a paralytic (vv. 8-9), triggering the crowd to adore both Paul and Barnabas as deities despite the latter’s dismissal (vv. 11-13). However, some Jews instigated the assembly to drag the two and to stone them to death (v. 19). Luckily, they managed to survive after some of the disciples had protected them and made them leave immediately this town for Derbe (v. 20b).

In sum, in all these places where Paul and Barnabas proclaimed the good news to the Gentile world, they experienced extreme persecution and rejection from an antagonistic Jewish hierarchy. For sure, the newly converted Christians in these places might be extremely fearful of their own lives. They must be probably thinking that they, too, could face the same kind of oppression, which the apostles underwent in their witnessing to the truth about Jesus.

For this reason, the duo needed to see them again personally to encourage them amid the imminent persecution they could face as authentic Jesus-followers.

In the Philippine context, the imminent loss—assuming that there were no irregularities in the counting of election returns—of the team of Vice-President Leni Robredo and Sen. Kiko Pangilinan in their presidential and vice-presidential bids, respectively, brought many to tears, heartaches, despair, and even anger at God. How could God allow them to lose when they are the only hope the Philippine nation have in salvaging democracy, good governance, and national progress? We don’t know the answer at this point since God has his divine plan and wisdom that we do not understand yet fully now. The only thing we can assure ourselves, according to Paul and Barnabas, is: “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). We are entering now a phase of suffering, but this is happening in order to prepare us better for the future reign of goodness.

May we, then, bear the pains of our loss without losing any hope that better things are yet to come, provided that we do not lose our guard and our mission in defending the truth and fighting against injustice in our land.

- Rex Fortes, CM