ACC ~ Acts 21 v13

NO ROOM FOR NATURAL AFFECTION. JEROME: The battering ram of natural affection, which so often shatters faith, must recoil powerless from the wall of the gospel. LETTER 14.3.

PAUL’S CONCERN FOR HIS FRIENDS. CHRYSOSTOM: Others were crying, but [Paul] was exhorting them as he grieved for their tears. “What are you doing,” he says, “crying and breaking my heart?” Nothing was dearer to him than these people. Because he saw them crying, he grieved, while he cared nothing for his own trials. “Let the Lord’s will,” he said, “be done.” You wrong me by doing this, so stop making me grieve. They stopped when he said, “You’re breaking my heart.” “I weep for you,” he says, “not for my sufferings, on behalf of which I am even willing to die.” They said, “Don’t go into the theatre,” and he did not. Again and again they drew him away and he obeyed. He fled through the window, but now, though myriads, so to speak, exhort him, and those in Tyre and Caesarea weep and foretell countless trials, he does not allow it. And yet they were foretelling terrible things for him, and, what is more, through the Holy Spirit. They were not holding him back through the Spirit, and they were not simply announcing terrible events to come his way. No, they were afraid for him because he had to go up to Jerusalem. Since they could not convince him not to go, they cried, and then they settled down. You see the love of wisdom, you see the affection. “The Lord,” he says, “will do what is pleasing in his sight.” They realized it was God’s will. Otherwise Paul, who was constantly having to snatch himself from dangers, would not have been so eager. CATENA ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 21.13-14.

PAUL’S WEAKNESS. CHRYSOSTOM: Tell me, what do you think about that adamant will of Paul? Could weeping break it? “Yes,” he says, “for I can hold out against anything except for love, since it is love that has overcome and rules me.” In this he is like God, whom an abyss of waters would not break but teardrops could. CATENA ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 21.13-14.

PAUL’S COURAGE. DIDYMUS THE BLIND: To this sort of opposition, respond as follows: “Why are you trying to keep me from the way I have set out on by weeping at the mention of the chains and afflictions that await me when I arrive in Jerusalem? Let it be known that I will follow the Spirit that has made known to me what awaits me and that I am setting out on the road to the city. I do not go ignorant of what will happen there, for I have foreseen it, and I am not being checked from going. So do not break my heart with your tears.” Whoever has been nobly prepared to be courageous enough to have no thought for his own life does not succumb to fear even if someone tries to provoke it. Now among them such dread had come to grip their thinking, and so the apostle said that his heart was being broken. He was not saying that he was weak but that he had come to such a state because of their bitter weeping. One could also say that just as little sins, in their actual commission, seem great to a holy person, so do the initial movements toward them, and so here he says the breaking of his heart is great. CATENA ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 21.13-14.

Acts