Barnabas

Today is the feast of St. Barnabas. Barnabas is mentioned several times in Acts and the Epistles but really he is a character who is never fleshed out in the Biblical narrative. His name means "son of encouragement" and seems to have been appropriate to his ministry from the little we know of him.

Encouragement is something which as adults we could often do with more of - there has been a bit of a campaign with positive feedback and building people up in management lingo over the last little while - and whilst this is well and good in theory, in practice it can very easily degenerate into a "right not to be criticized" mode of existance - and we have all suffered from the results of people not being told how to do things better for fear of upsetting them.

The major saints days are scattered throughout the year and they offer us encouragement. The ones I tend to look forward to are the ones which offer me a picture of a less than perfect person who struggled through or like Barnabas, who I do not know that much about but still he is someone who the Church recognizes as a saint - there is, to me, comfort in the thought that God knows and the Church has recognized this person's actions - I personally do not have to know what he looked like or everything he did to rejoice in a life well lived in Christ.

This might sound naive, but I mention it because we are in a community which should be one of encouragement - but in order to receive that well, we must trust that our community knows us as loves us and also trust that we do not need to hold on to everything ourselves - we believe and trust in God but we do not have to be the whole Church of Christ single-handedly.

This smallness and imperfection encourages me - not to remain small and imperfect but to grow and walk more closely with Christ. The saints were giants of Christian perfection - but even Christian perfection does not claim all for itself, is not all in itself - we are of the earth and our fulfilment is only found in the arms of God, when truly we will sing with Barnabas and all the saints in the heavenly realms.