Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Acts 18:9–18; John 16:20–23
What is trust? Whom do you trust? When life does not go the way you imagined, do you have someone to lean on?
Sharing the story of Jesus does not always move along smooth roads.
Very often, it moves through rejection.
That is what happened to Paul in Corinth.
He began in the synagogue, speaking to Jews and Greeks.
Some listened. Some believed. But others resisted him.
And that rejection became a beginning.
This is the first lesson in trust.
What looks like loss becomes the place where grace starts to work in a new way.
We usually think that when something goes wrong, the mission has failed.
But in the hands of God, even opposition can become a passage.
And Paul’s enemies do not stop with rejection.
They bring him before Gallio, the Roman governor.
Now the matter is public. Serious. Dangerous.
Paul stands there not in control, not protected by his own power, not able to force the outcome.
And yet the case is dismissed.
This is the second lesson in trust:
sometimes we have to surrender.
We cannot control everything. But there is One who can.
Jesus, the Lord.
Paul keeps preaching. Paul keeps serving. Paul keeps staying.
He does what he can do. And he leaves the rest in the hands of God.
That is the heart of trust.
To know that everything— yes, everything— can work for the good of those who love God.
And Paul loved Jesus with his whole heart.
In the Gospel, Jesus says that sorrow will turn into joy.
He gives the image of a woman in labor.
The pain is real. The anguish is real. But it is not the last word.
Something new is being born.
That image fits Paul’s time in Corinth.
There was conflict. There was strain. There was uncertainty. There were tears.
But by the time Paul leaves, there is a living Christian community there.
What began in struggle ends in fruit.
Then Luke adds a quiet detail.
Before sailing from Cenchreae, Paul cuts his hair because of a vow.
We are not told everything. But the gesture matters.
It feels like thanksgiving. Like remembrance. Like someone looking back and saying:
God has carried me.
Perhaps that is where this reading meets us.
We do not always understand why some doors close.
We do not always know why some seasons are so heavy.
We do not always see at once what God is bringing to birth.
But the story of Paul in Corinth teaches us to go on. To trust. To surrender.
And when words fail, Saint Teresa of Avila gives us words to borrow:
“Let nothing trouble you / Let nothing frighten you Everything passes / God never changes Patience / Obtains all Whoever has God / Wants for nothing God alone is enough” (see CCC, 227).
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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