Word to the Wise
Wednesday, May 28, 2025 - 6th Week of Easter - Wed
[Acts 17:15, 22-18:1 and John 16:12-15]"You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, "'To an Unknown God.' What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you..." [Acts]
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St. Paul has arrived in Athens, a city well-known in his own time and still celebrated in ours because of its association with the profound influence of ancient Greek culture and philosophy as well as religious beliefs. Like any tourist, he was walking around and looking at the variety of polytheistic shrines on offer to anyone living there. We are told a few verses earlier that the sheer variety "exasperated" him. The 'Altar to an Unknown God' caught his attention and gave him an opening for his preaching. Some of the Athenians thought him interesting enough to bring him to the "areopagus" - a public debate forum. "For all Athenians as well as the foreigners residing there used their time for nothing else but telling or hearing something new!"
Paul's speech is a masterpiece of catechesis to an audience for whom Christianity would be just another sect seeking a place to have a shrine. He didn't convince everyone in the audience, but he did convince a few who joined him. To proclaim monotheism in the capital of polytheism takes guts!
One may wonder, after reading this text from the Acts of the Apostles, if there is a parallel reality - perhaps an ironic one - in our own time. A visit to Washington DC and all the monuments which reflect ancient Greek architecture - shrines? - and which celebrate figures and "sacred texts" from the "American experience" might raise the question about an "unknown God." How does one preach Christ in the midst of all the cultural and economic "shrines" that characterize us in the eyes of the world? St. Paul's address, reconstructed by the evangelist Luke, might be very helpful! AMEN