I was blessed to visit Philippi for the first time this past May. Though I had been on several pilgrimages in the footsteps of Saint Paul before, I had never walked among the ruins of this location. In the weeks since I visited, I have found myself reading and studying more and more about the history of this place — a history that proves extremely important in better understanding the letter Paul writes to the small Christian community there.

A few weeks back, we read the beginning of Romans 12, where we heard Paul’s exhortation to not be conformed to this world, to not let it squeeze us into its way of thinking, nor to allow ourselves to be squeezed into its way of thinking. But don’t most of us do that all the time?! Today, as we ponder Augustine’s rich insight, we see what’s at stake.

Blessed Solanus Casey powerfully embodied what Paul calls all of us to be and to do for one another. He is a most moving testimony of the same words Paul offered  to the Church in Corinth: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If … I have not love, I am nothing.”

If there is one foundational Scriptural text for our work in ACTS XXIX, this is it. ACTS XXIX doesn’t offer programs, though programs can be and often are immensely helpful in the Church. Instead, the charism, the gift, God has entrusted to us as an apostolate is what we call “the three essential principles” for transformation in the Church and in the world.