Friends, on this last day before Pentecost, we come to the end of both the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of John. At the end of Acts, Paul finds himself in Rome, the centre of the Empire and the centre of secular power at the time. Rome was the place where Paul would eventually be martyred for his faith in Christ. We might ask ourselves why God ordained that both Peter and Paul would both give their lives for Christ at the very heart of the world. Perhaps it was that the Gospel they brought was to arrive at the heart of the world would be brought, like blood from the heart, to every cell of the body, to the uttermost parts of the world. This was the understanding of our own St Patrick - he was commissioned by God to bring the Gospel to Ireland in the fifth century - to where we were, as he understood, at the ends of the earth.
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