Sermon - St. Barnabas, Apostle
St. Barnabas Healing the Sick, Paolo Veronese, circa 1556 Generosity and Encouragement Barnabas was generous and encouraging What it means for us to be generous What it means for us to encourage A blessed feast of St. Barnabas to you dear friends in Christ! Many of the saints in the bible don’t always behave rather saintly, and we see many of their character flaws. Barnabas, however, isn’t that way. Throughout the book of Acts he is known for his generosity and encouragement. For that reason Barnabas is a wonderful example to us of what it means to be generous and how to encourage one another. Barnabas was a Levite from the Island of Cyprus, a small but very fertile and rich island. He was originally named Joseph, but the apostles called him Barnabas, meaning son of encouragement. He’s introduced to us in the Bible when he sold one of his fields and gave the money to the apostles to be distributed among the needy christians and support the work of the ministry. Later, after St. Pa...