Daily Scripture Reflection & Prayer: May 13,2026

LECTIO - Read Scripture Text:   Acts 17:22-34

Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said:

“I see that you Athenians are very religious in every respect. For as I passed by, looking at your devotions, I found an altar with the inscription “To the unknown God.”  He whom you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you. This God made the world and all things in it. He does not dwell in temples made with human hands because He is Lord of heaven and earth. Neither is He served with human hands as though He needed anything. He gives to all life and breath and all things. And He has made the human race to dwell on all the face of the earth. He has determined the seasons and the boundaries of their regions so that people might seek the Lord and happily perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed He is not far from any one of us. For in Him ‘we live and move and have our being’ as some of your poets have said. ‘For we also are his offspring.’

“Since we are therefore the offspring of God, we ought not to think that his divinity is like an idol fashioned from gold, silver or stone by human creativity. God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now He demands that all peoples everywhere repent because He has established a day on which He will judge the world with justice through one He has appointed and has provided confirmation for all by raising Him from the dead.”

When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some mocked Paul. Others said, “We want to hear you speak again of this matter.”

Before Paul departed from them, certain men stayed with him and believed among which were Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

MEDITATIO - Meditate on text, allow the LORD to touch us with His Word:

BREAKING OPEN THE TEXT:

Today’s first reading recounts Paul’s evangelization of the Athenians. He affirms their innate spiritual knowledge by proclaiming the one true God pointing to their monument “to the unknown God.” Paul points out both the nearness always of this God and LORD but also the call to repent before the judgment by Him who rose from the dead and will judge – namely, Jesus Christ.

ORATIO – Lifting our minds and hearts to the LORD in prayer:

Loving and Gracious LORD, Creator and source of all being, in You, I live and move and have my being. With praise and thanksgiving, I look to You daily knowing that without You, I would not be. Send your Spirit to stir within me and blend within me the desire to live the life You created me to live and to be the one You created me to be. Grant that I may see your only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as my Savior and believe in Him and His love with all my mind and heart. I ask this in His name, in the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Spirit, one LORD, forever and ever. Amen.

CONTEMPLATIO – Sitting with the LORD in silence for a minute or more