Feast day: June 11
St. Barnabas
The 'son of encouragement' who vouched for the newly converted Paul when everyone else feared him, then partnered with him on the first missionary journeys.
Barnabas was a Jew of the island of Cyprus, a Levite whose given name was Joseph, but the apostles renamed him Barnabas — 'son of encouragement' — and the name fit the man. He appears early in the Acts of the Apostles as a model of generosity, selling a field he owned and laying the money at the apostles' feet for the common good of the first Christians in Jerusalem.
His great gift was for seeing the good in others and drawing it out. When the newly converted Saul came to Jerusalem and the Christians there, remembering him as their fierce persecutor, were afraid to receive him, it was Barnabas who vouched for him and brought him to the apostles. Later, when the new Gentile church at Antioch needed a teacher, it was Barnabas who went and fetched Saul from Tarsus — and so the future apostle Paul owed his start, twice over, to the trust of Barnabas.
Together the two were sent out by the church of Antioch as the first great missionaries to the Gentiles, traveling through Cyprus and Asia Minor, preaching, suffering, and founding churches. At Lystra the awestruck crowds, seeing their miracles, took them for gods come down — calling Barnabas 'Zeus' and Paul 'Hermes' — until the apostles tore their garments and begged them to worship the living God instead.
Though not one of the Twelve, Barnabas is honored by the Church as an apostle, ranked with them for his labors. He and Paul eventually parted ways over Barnabas's young cousin John Mark, and Barnabas returned with Mark to evangelize his native Cyprus, where, by tradition, he was martyred. He is the patron saint of Cyprus and a model of encouragement and reconciliation.
No Barnabas, no Paul: he's the one who convinced the terrified Jerusalem church that their persecutor had truly converted.
Image: Sandro Botticelli (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/02300a.htm
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