✽✽✽  Even in fear or anxiety, we can sense this peace of Jesus.  ✽✽✽

＊＊＊ 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：

Letting Go

Authentic, mature, true love lets go of the beloved. To cling to the other is a sign of immaturity, insecurity, and the dread of losing the other. There are parents who love their children “so much” that they cannot even think of letting them move to another city; or couples who cannot bear the absence of each other, even for a day. The truth is, sooner or later, we get suffocated within such relationship, we grow stunted, and we break up.

The same applies to our relationship with God as well. Jesus tells the disciples: “If you loved me, you would be glad that I go.” To Mary Magdalene he says, “Do not cling to me” (Jn 20:17). And once we let the other “be”, the other comes back to us in freedom and in greater presence. As Jesus says, “I am going away, but I am coming to you.” If only we let God be!