Thursday of the Third Week of Easter
April 22, 2021
Daily Reading from the USCCB: Acts 8:26-40
Philip was driven out of Jerusalem in the persecution that followed Stephen’s martyrdom. He fled to Samaria and began to preach the gospel there with great success. The Samaritans were not really Jews but a mixed breed people who found the gospel of Jesus appealing, and accepted it joyfully.
The gospel of Jesus is now to be spread still further. The Ethiopian was a foreigner, perhaps converted to Judaism, but not the kind of person that Jews welcomed. Yet the Lord sees to it that the gospel is preached even to him.
The gospel of the Lord is spreading: beyond Jerusalem, throughout Samaria, even to Africa. All this is a preface to the story of the spread of the gospel throughout the world that now begins.
