May 8th, 2004. Wednesday of the sixth week of Easter.

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 at the Aereopagus 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 an 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 one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth,

and he fixed the ordered seasons and the 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,

silver, or stone by 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.

...