Mass was offered yesterday (Thursday) morning for the repose of the soul of Padraig Quinn (+), may he be forever blessed. Haven't found a moment to make a note of it until now. By now, the first readings are taking us through the missionary adventures of Saint Paul and his companions and, in the synagogue of Antioch-in-Pisidia (central Asia Minor), Paul gives one of his great sermons. I won't reproduce it; it's all in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
One of the things I love to tell anybody who waits long enough to hear it is that Saint Paul walking through the ancient world, always used the Roman roads and the Roman cities. Which means that today, following the remarkable work of archeologists over the last several decades, there are today ruins of Roman cities wherever the New Testament tells us that Paul passed through or remained.
And with the state of modern digital technology, we can actually look at these sites from our computers using satellite imagery. Occasionally, during my two years in Rome, I would stand before the high altar at the basilica of S. Paul outside the City, and I knew that I was standing just where they put the great man in the ground. I get a similar feeling when I zoom into the site of Antioch-in-Pisidia using the Google Earth software and see what archeologists have labeled as the Jewish synagogue and say to myself, 'That's where he stood and told them what was what.'
Here then, courtesy of Google Earth, and over the hills from Iconium (which the Turks today call Konya) is the old site of Antioch, in central Asia Minor:
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