The first reading is a reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

After Paul's escorts had taken him to Athens, they came away with instructions for Silas and Timothy

to join him as soon as possible. Then Paul stood up in the Areophagus and said,

You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.

For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines,

I even discovered an altar inscribed to the unknown God.

What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.

The God who made the world and all that is in it,

the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands,

nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather, it is he who

gives to everyone life and breath and everything. He made from the one whole human race to dwell

on the entire surface of the earth, surface of the earth,

and he fixed the ordered seasons and boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God,

even 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 even some of your poets have said, for we too are his offspring. Since therefore we are the

offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold or silver

or stone or human art and imagination.

God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent

because he has established a day on which he will judge the world with

justice through a man he has appointed and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him

from the dead when they heard about the resurrection of the dead some began to sc But others said, we should like to hear you on this

some other time. And so Paul left them. But some did join him and became believers. Among them were

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