A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, as you go, make this announcement. The reign of god is at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, heal the leprous, expel demons. The gift you have received, give as a gift.
Provide yourselves with neither gold nor silver nor copper in your belts. No traveling bag, no change of shirt, no sandals, no walking staff. The workman, after all, is worth his keep. Look for a worthy citizen in every town or village that you come to and stay with him until you leave that town. As you enter his home, bless it.
If the home is deserving, your blessing will descend upon it. If it is not, your blessing will return to you. And this is the good news of the Lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. This is the feast of Saint Barnabas, apostle and martyr.
And we know a good bit about him from the book of the Acts. One of the little known facts about Saint Barnabas is that Barnabas wasn't his name. He had the very illustrious name of Joseph, but they changed it to Barnabas. Why? The apostles did.
Why? Because this man, Barnabas, seems to have had a very special gift, a charismatic gift of exhortation. So that they they gave him this word Barnabas which on the best authority that I've come across, tells us means son of encouragement. Son of encouragement. Now we have a facility, an inclination, a strong persuasion, even a conviction that the early church was all peace.
The disciples and their followers all gathered together in the unity of mind and heart and soul. They gave their worldly possessions into a common fund. It was almost a utopia in this world and anticipating by a few 100 centuries, our dear and late lamented friend Karl Marx. Well, folks, it wasn't that way at all. First of all, you've we've during the Paschal season, we read plenty from the book of the acts of the apostles which shows the dissensions there there were in the church, plural, over a number of questions and serious questions.
Now, Paul and Barnabas are generally associated together as very good and close friends. Well, they were until they had an argument and they separated company over a young man by the name of John Mark. See, as you will recall, John Mark wasn't exactly the most faithful follower of Saint Paul. He deserted him. And so when Paul and Barnabas were setting out on one of their expeditions into the Gentile world, Barnabas wanted to take John Mark and Paul said, Nix, he's not going with us.
Well, and Barnabas says, well, if he doesn't go, I don't go. You know, that's a very familiar argument. So Paul and Barnabas separated company, which has given considerable scope to men like Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine to explain it. Well, I'm not trying to explain anything. They were human beings, And who can explain a human being?
We can't even explain ourselves to ourselves. So this man, Barnabas, deserves a good bit of attention. After all, was with Paul, one of the most influential and successful apostles carrying the good news to the Gentile world, that's us. Now I like that thought of Saint Barnabas as the son of encouragement. No matter who or what we are, no matter how successful we've been, no matter how dismally we have failed, We all need encouragement.
You know it means something about placing something in the heart. We all need that because you know even a long wave of success gets boring. And of course, nobody needs to be encouraged to get out of a long wave of failure. So, either event, we need help. We need help.
Help. And this is the thought that strikes me so much that we speak in the name of the church Now, there's a passage in every every the canon of the mass where we where we pray with the church And whenever I say that, this is a kind of a personal thing, but I'm it's a mere matter of fact. Whenever that comes up in every single mass, a former student of mine comes to my to my mind. She had gone through the second world war and three invasions, a nurse. And after the war, which she survived, and you remember that invasion of Laura Italy was a honey.
Anyway, she came back and came to Catholic U to get her master's degree, which she got, a very talented and rather unusual student. The next thing we knew, she had gone down gone south and joined the Carmelite Order as what is called a choir nun. The next thing I heard was that this lady, with all that experience behind her, with with her training as a and experience and education, with with her attainments in the academic world, as well as in other fields, had not only become a karma light nun, but had petitioned a superior to become a cook or something in the kitchen. She gave up the whole thing, and she's still there. She I get a card from her every Christmas.
Now here's my point. When I when we think of the church, this church here can be absolutely empty. I can be up here on a Saturday morning practically alone saying, And yet I speak of the church and that is absolutely literally true. And every time I say that I think of this unknown woman who after attaining practically everything she wanted goes down to to into a southern city, joins a Carmelite order which is strictly cloistered, and then after becoming what is called a quire nun by her own petition, she becomes a label. I don't know, I forget what they call them, but it's the order in most of these contemplative orders that are old.
You know, you had the distinction between the the nuns who were inquirer, who sang the office, and all that kind of thing. And then you had other nuns who took care of running the establishment, Extremely important and essential, but it's not supposed to be as a high level as the choir nuns. Well, she went down to the lower level. And I always think of her. There she is down in that little old convent someplace in the South.
Nobody knows her name, and there she's praying with me up here. I know that. She may not be thinking of me, but she's praying with the church. Now the church is a very diversified thing, And when we speak of Paul and Barnabas and how they went among the Gentiles and how today we are told for the first time, the followers of Christ are called Christians. We can't avoid this concept that the earliest possible record we have of the church is a community of human beings, individual human beings, and they didn't cease being human became because they became followers of Christ.
Some were good, some were bad, and all of them at one time or the other had their failings. That's that's that's the way we all are. We're in good company. We are members of Christ's church, an assembly of the faithful baptized into the body of Jesus Christ that we call the mystical body. So that and when we think of this, let's think of it realistically.
Paul and Barnabas and John Mark and Peter and James and John, they were all part of it. And yet was everything fine and tranquil? Was everything honey and cream and beautiful spring strawberries floating in it without any dissension. That picture is utterly false. It would be false of any group of human beings as long as they kept their humanity.
And so let us realize the company we keep. Let us realize the the the facts of life, but let us not overlook the great truths of life that Jesus Christ came to give us, and we call it the good news. The company we keep is a company with the saints, living and dead, some known and unknown. Those whose praises are sung and those whose praises are not sung. I right away, think of the mother of Ronald Tolkien.
Certainly, a martyr to truth and to her convictions. Nobody's ever raised an epitaph to her. There are millions like that. That's the company we keep. And let us realize it that we are not alone.
We are in this vast assembly of the faithful with Paul and Barnabas and John Mark and all the rest who sometimes argued and sometimes loved each other. Well, I should say they loved each other all the time. A little argument now and then doesn't destroy true love, you know. Matter of fact, it can be refreshing. And so I asked you, as I have insisted time and again, to be a Christian is to be a joyful person because we have confidence, we have security, we know where we're going, we are not looking and trying to find ourselves.
The reason is we found Jesus Christ, and in him, we can find ourselves if we look. In the name of the father and of the son, the holy spirit, amen.