Mistaken Identity

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

One can hardly blame the inhabitants of Lystra and Derbe for thinking that Paul and Barnabas were gods. By healing the paralytic, they had demonstrated that they were capable of incredible things. Paul and Barnabas react appropriately, making it clear that they are messenger of God rather than gods themselves.

The phenomenon of personal cults and entourages in our modern day world betray how easy it is for someone to be swayed by the crowd's attention. Some people simply cannot handle "celebrity" very well. It goes to their heads. They become so taken up with the adulation of the crowd that they begin to think they are better than. Remarks such as "he puts his pants on the same as everyone else, one leg at a time," indicate that most of us would rather deal with someone who thinks of him or herself as the same as. However, many of us will try to stretch "our fifteen minutes of fame" into a much longer experience.

A "better than" attitude is very dangerous when we are dealing with God's realm. We are all God's children, blessed with individual talents and skills, loved and cherished by God. Saints Paul and Barnabas teach us that we all need to remember that it is God's realm, not my own. It is God's name we praise, not my own. God worked through the saints, but the power was and is always God's power. As St. Paul writes in the letter to the Philippians: I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me. (Philippians 4:13) May we never forget that without Christ, we could do nothing.