St. Nereus  & Achilleus, martyrs 

St. Pancras, martyr 

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊

Acts 14:19-28

Then some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium

and turned the people against them. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the town, leaving him for dead.  But when his disciples gathered around him, he stood up and returned to the town. And the next day he left for Derbe with Barnabas.

After proclaiming the gospel in that town and making many disciples, they returned to Lystra and Iconium and on to Antioch. They were strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain firm in the faith, for they said, “We must go through many trials to enter the Kingdom of God.” In each church they appointed elders and, after praying and fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had placed their faith.

Then they traveled through Pisi­dia, and came to Pamphylia. They preached the Word in Perga and went down to Attalia. From there they sailed back to Antioch, where they had first been commended to God’s grace for the task they had now completed.

 On their arrival they gathered the Church together and told them all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the non-Jews. They spent a fairly long time there with the disciples.

 

Ps 145:10-11, 12-13ab, 21

Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your kingdom.

 

＊＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊

John 14:27-31a

Peace be with you; I give you my peace. Not as the world gives peace do I give it to you. Do not be troubled; do not be afraid.  You heard me say: ‘I am go­ing away, but I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.

I have told you this now before it takes place, so that when it does happen you may believe.  It is very little what I may still tell you, for the prince of this world is at hand, although there is nothing in me that he can claim.  But see, the world must know that I love the Father and that I do what the Father has taught me to do. Come now, let us go.

 

Gospel Reflection：

We see more serious organizing happening in the early Church in the first reading. As the gospel continued to spread and more people were baptized and entered into the community, structures needed to be created, and so “elders” were appointed to oversee the communities but also to serve as guides to the young flock.

In the gospel, Jesus speaks of a kind of peace that only he can give, a kind of peace that is different from the peace that the world gives. It is a peace that is rooted in the accomplishment of God’s constant and unchanging will rather than the will and whim of men that is ever changing like the wind.

But because of this – because of this kind of peace being anchored in the constant will of the Father – it will inevitably encounter not only resistance from the world but at times (and the experience of the early church and in fact the church of every age bears this out) downright persecution.

And yet, because it is firmly rooted in the Father and in the work that Jesus had accomplished, this peace is ultimately indestructible and has a staying power that the world will never know.