St. Barnabas

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We're told in St. Matthew, “As you go, proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those suffering from virulent skin diseases, drive out devils. You received without charge, give without charge.

“Provide yourselves with no gold or silver, not even with coppers for your purses, with no haversack for the journey or spear tunic or footwear or staff, for the laborer deserves his keep” (Matt. 12:7-10).

Today is the Feast of St. Barnabas.

There’s a story of a man called John D. Rockefeller, who was once the richest man in the world. He was the first billionaire in the world.

By age 25, he controlled one of the largest oil refineries in the U.S. By age 31, he'd become the world's largest oil refiner.

By age 38, he commanded 90 percent of the oil refined in the U.S. By the time of his retirement at 58, he was the richest man in the country. By the time he died, he'd become the richest man in the world.

As a young man, every decision, attitude, and relationship was tailored to create his personal power and wealth.

But at the age of 53, he became ill. His entire body became racked with pain and he lost all of his hair. In complete agony, the world's only billionaire could buy anything he wanted, but he could only digest milk and crackers.

An associate of his wrote, “He could not sleep, he would not smile, and nothing in life meant anything to him. His personal highly skilled physicians predicted that he would die within a year.”

That year passed agonizingly slowly. As he approached death, he woke one morning with the vague remembrances of a dream about not being able to take any of his successors with him into the next world.

The man who could control the business world suddenly realized he was not in control of his own life. He was left with a choice.

He called his attorneys, accountants, and managers and announced that he wanted to channel his assets to hospitals, research, and mission work. On that day, John D. Rockefeller established his foundation. This new direction eventually led to the discovery of penicillin, cures for malaria, tuberculosis, and diphtheria.

But possibly the most amazing part of Rockefeller's story was that the moment he began to give back a portion of all that he had earned, his body's chemistry was altered so significantly that he got better.

It looked as if he would die at 53, but in fact he lived to be 98. He learned gratitude and gave back the vast majority of his wealth.

Doing so made him whole. It's one thing to be healed, it's another to be made whole.

He attended the Baptist church. He was faithful in working for God in the church, cleaning the house of God until he died.

Before his death he wrote in his diary, “I was early taught to work as well as play, My life has been one long, happy holiday; Full of work and full of play—I dropped the worry on the way—and God was good to me every day” (Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.).

As we read the words of St. Matthew in today's Gospel, we can think about the value of giving.

St. Barnabas was a native of Cyprus. He was one of the first believers in Jerusalem. It was he who presented St. Paul to the apostles after his conversion and he also accompanied him on his first apostolic journey.

He took part in the Council of Jerusalem and was a figure of great importance in the Church at Antioch, the first Christian nucleus of considerable size outside of Jerusalem. It was there for the first time that people were called Christians (Acts 11:26).

He was a relative of Mark, on whom he exercised a decisive influence. He returned to his native land, evangelized it, and died a martyr in or about the year 63.

His name is mentioned in the First Eucharistic Prayer.

The word Barnabas means “son of consolation.” It was a name given by the apostles to Joseph, a Levite and a native of Cyprus (cf. Acts 4:36).

St. John Chrysostom comments that this surname must have been inspired by his conciliatory spirit and his sympathetic manner (cf. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, Point 21).

After the martyrdom of Stephen and the persecution that followed, some Christians went to Antioch, taking with them their faith in Jesus Christ. When word reached the apostles in Jerusalem about the wonders the Holy Spirit was working in Antioch, they sent Barnabas there (Acts 11:22).

His zeal for extending the kingdom led him to look for instruments who would be capable of carrying out the enormous task that faced them.

He went to Tarsus to look for Paul. “And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a large company of people” (Acts 11:26).

He had already detected in the new convert those qualities that, with the help of grace, would transform him into the apostle of the Gentiles. It was Barnabas who had presented Paul to the apostles in Jerusalem a short time before, when many Christians were still suspicious of him who was their former persecutor (cf. Acts 9:26-27).

With Paul then, he set off on his first missionary journey, whose objective was the island of Cyprus (cf. Acts 13:1-4). They were accompanied also by Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, who left them in Pergia halfway through the journey and returned to Jerusalem.

When St. Paul was planning a second great missionary journey, Barnabas wanted to take Mark along with him. But Paul thought it better “not to take with him one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia, and had not gone with him to the work. This aroused strong dissension between them that they separated from one another” (Acts 15:36-39).

Barnabas afterwards didn't want to leave his cousin Mark out, who was perhaps very young when his strength had failed him at the time of his initial desertion.

He was able to encourage and strengthen him, and made of him a great evangelist and a very effective collaborator of Peter and even of Paul, with whom Barnabas was to remain later united.

Later on, Paul was to express an opinion of the highest esteem for Mark (2 Tim. 4:11), “as though he saw in him a reflection of his own sympathetic manner and recalled pleasant memories of Barnabas, the friend of his youth” (J. Prado, Great Encyclopedia Rialp).

Today, St. Barnabas invites us to have a big heart in the apostolate, so that we don't become easily discouraged by the defects and the falling away of those friends or relatives of ours whom we want to bring to Christ, and so that we do not leave them out when they weaken or perhaps don't respond to our efforts and our prayers on their behalf.

And if sometimes they fail, quite obviously, to correspond with our concern for them, this should only lead us to do all we can to deal with our friends with still greater affection, with a more ready smile, and to make even greater use than we've done before of the supernatural means.

We're told in the Gospel, “Preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons…” (Matt. 10:7-13).

This is a command that should resound in the hearts of all Christians. It's an apostolate that each one of us has to try and have a positive duty to carry out personally in our own surroundings, whether it be in a town or in a part of a great city, in the place where we work, at a school or university.

We will come across people who are dead spiritually, whom we have to take to receive the sacrament of Penance so they recover their supernatural life—people who are sick, who cannot manage by themselves, and need help in order to approach Christ; lepers who will be cleansed by grace through our friendship with them; people possessed, whose cure will require of us extraordinary prayer and penance.

As well as having constancy, we cannot forget that, as St. Josemaría in Friends of God says, “souls improve…with time” (Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 78). And so, we have to be aware of the different situations and circumstances of those who need our help.

We're told of St. Barnabas that he was “a good man” (Acts 11:24) who deserved the surname “son of consolation” (Acts 4:36), and that he brought peace to many hearts.

The Acts of the Apostles tell us, the first time they mention him, of his large-heartedness, a breadth of sympathy which can be seen in his generosity and in his spirit of detachment:

Barnabas “sold a field which belonged to him, and bought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet” (Acts 4:37). In this way he was able to follow Our Lord with greater freedom.

A generous and detached soul is in a position to give everybody a welcome and to understand the state that souls are really in. When people feel they are understood, it's more likely that they will allow themselves to be helped.

In the apostolate, the best means a Christian has of winning people over is precisely this welcoming openness toward others, accepting them and really appreciating them as they are. St. Augustine says, “Nobody can be known except in terms of the friendship we bear towards him” (Augustine, Sermon 83).

If we are to understand others, we need to look at everything that is positive about them, and to see their faults only within the context of their good qualities, whether these good qualities are actual or simply in potency. And we have to want to help them.

We should take the advice of St. Teresa of Ávila, who says, “Let us labor, therefore, always to consider the virtues and the good qualities we discern in others, and with our own sins cover our eyes, so that we may see no more of their failings” (Teresa of Ávila, Life).

St. Bernard says, “Even if you do see something bad, do not immediately pass judgment on your neighbor, but rather find excuses for him within yourself. Excuse his intentions if you cannot excuse his deeds. Think that he must have acted out of ignorance or have been overcome by surprise or misfortune.

“If his conduct is so obviously bad that it cannot be overlooked, even then try to think in this way and say to yourself: the temptation must have been very strong” (Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 40 on the Canticle of Canticles).

We have to learn from Our Lord how to live harmoniously with everyone, not to think too much about the way people around us fail to correspond with our efforts or seem deficient in good manners or generosity.

Those shortcomings can often be the result of ignorance, or of loneliness, or no more than just plain tiredness. The good we set out to do can rise above the all such mere trifles, and if we consider them in God's presence, they cease to have any real importance.

In The Forge we're told, “You spend your time with that companion of yours who is scarcely even civil to you…and it's hard. Keep at it, and don't judge him. He'll have his ‘reasons,’ just as you have yours, which you strengthen so as to pray for him more each day” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 843). Those ‘reasons’ of ours originate in and are centered on the tabernacle.

We're told in the Psalms, “Sing praise to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody! With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King of the Lord!” (Ps. 98:5-6).

It's possible that some Christians may allow themselves to be carried away by a bitter zeal as they see everything around them so seemingly far from God, and see the lifestyle adopted by many people who, they feel, should be giving better example.

Such zealous Christians try to do good, but they're all the time lamenting the obvious evil they see around them and reproaching society which, according to them, should take drastic measures to put an end to such evil.

God does not want us to be like that. He gave his life serenely and peacefully on the Cross for all men. It would be a great failure if Christians were to adopt a negative attitude towards the world they are called to save.

We can see the first generations of those who followed Christ always full of joy, in spite of the frequent tribulations they had to undergo.

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke tries to describe in a few words the little communities that had sprung up everywhere. He tells us that the Church “was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it was multiplied” (Acts 9:31).

This is the peace of Christ which we will never lack if we’re to follow Him closely. It's the peace that we have to give to everyone.

We have to imitate Our Lord and resolutely reject any attitude tainted with harshness, bitterness, or a desire for condemnation. If, as Christians, we're to bring joy to the world, how can we think of presenting the Good News as something unattractive and condemnatory? How can we judge others if we do not have the necessary facts on which to judge? And, above all, if nobody has in any case given us such a mission?

Our attitude towards everyone should always be one of salvation, of peace, of understanding, and of joy—even towards those who at some time or other may have behaved unjustly towards us.

We're told in The Forge, “Understanding is real charity. When you really achieve it, you will have a great heart which is open to all without discrimination. Even with those who have treated you badly you will put into living practice that advice of Jesus: ‘Come to me all you that…are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28)’” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 867).

Each Christian is Christ who passes by among His own, who lightens their burdens and shows them the way to salvation.

As we come to an end of our prayer, we ask Our Lord for the same love that inspired St. Barnabas.

A letter that John Paul II wrote at the start of the third millennium could well have been written to Barnabas when he went to Antioch: “Let us go forward in hope!” he said. “A new millennium is opening before the Church like a vast ocean upon which we shall venture, relying on the help of Christ.

“The Son of God, who became incarnate two thousand years ago out of love for humanity, is at work even today. We need discerning eyes to see this and, above all, a generous heart to become instruments of his work…

“Now, the Christ whom we have contemplated and loved bids us to set out once more on our journey: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’ (Matt 28:19).

“The missionary mandate accompanies us into the Third Millennium and urges us to share the enthusiasm of the very first Christians. We can count on the power of the same Spirit who was poured out at Pentecost and who impels us still today to start out anew, sustained by the hope ‘which does not disappoint’ (Rom. 5:5).

“At the beginning of this new century, our steps must quicken as we travel the highways of the world. Many are the paths on which each one of us and each of our Churches must travel, but there is no distance between those who are united in the same communion, the communion which is daily nourished at the table of the Eucharistic Bread and the Word of Life.

“Every Sunday, the Risen Christ asks us to meet him as it were once more in the Upper Room where, on the evening of ‘the first day of the week’ (John 20:19), he appeared to his disciples in order to ‘breathe’ on them his life-giving Spirit and launch them on the great adventure of proclaiming the Gospel.

“On this journey we are accompanied by the Blessed Virgin Mary. … During this year I have often invoked her as the ‘Star of the New Evangelization.’ Now I point to Mary once again as the radiant dawn and sure guide for our steps.

“Once more, echoing the words of Jesus himself and giving voice to the filial affection of the whole Church, I say to her, ‘Woman, behold your children’ (cf. John 19:26)” (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Novo millennio ineunte, Points 58-59, January 6, 2001).

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF