Driven Out

This time of year holds a special beauty—not just in the changing seasons or the lingering joy of Easter—but in the daily readings at Mass, where we journey through the Acts of the Apostles.

If you’re familiar with Acts, it’s like revisiting foundational stories of our faith.

If you’re not, it can feel like the Gospel continued—and in many ways, it is. St. Luke, who wrote one of the four Gospels, also authored Acts, giving us a kind of "Part II" of the story: Christ now alive and moving through His Church.

More than once, I’ve heard a story from Acts and thought it came from the Gospels. But that's the beauty of it—Christ didn’t stop working after the Resurrection. His presence is still active, still tangible, in the lives of the Apostles and the early Church.

You can almost trace His hand at work, sometimes even more clearly than the Apostles could in the moment. Take, for instance, the growing persecution they faced. As the Church expands, so does the opposition. Eventually, the situation becomes so dire that nearly all the Christians flee Jerusalem—except for the Apostles.

To outsiders, this might have looked like defeat. The believers scattered! The movement fractured! But in God’s providence, it was exactly the opposite.

By driving the disciples out of Jerusalem, the enemies of the Church unknowingly launched a missionary movement. The Gospel was carried into new cities, new regions, and new hearts. What looked like a scattering was actually a sending.

It made me think about the moments in my own life that feel like loss or setback. A door closes. A plan falls apart. And my first instinct is, This is bad. But Acts reminds us: God is always at work, even in the disruption. Even in the scattering. We don’t always need to understand what He's doing—we just need to trust that He is doing something.

So let’s stay faithful. Like the early Christians, we may be driven out of comfort or certainty—but never out of God’s plan.