Catholic Commentary
The Mission Begins: Sailing to Cyprus
4So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia. From there they sailed to Cyprus.5When they were at Salamis, they proclaimed God’s word in the Jewish synagogues. They also had John as their attendant.
Acts 13:4–5 describes Paul and Barnabas being sent by the Holy Spirit from Antioch to Cyprus, where they proclaim God's word in Jewish synagogues in Salamis with John Mark as their assistant. This passage establishes the beginning of the first Christian missionary journey, rooted in divine direction rather than human initiative.
The Spirit doesn't dwell in the Church for comfort—the Spirit sends, and every baptized Catholic shares this outward momentum toward the world.
"They also had John as their attendant" (ὑπηρέτην). This is John Mark, cousin of Barnabas (Colossians 4:10) and future author of the second Gospel. The word ὑπηρέτης ("attendant" or "assistant") is the same term Luke uses in his prologue (Luke 1:2) to describe the eyewitnesses who became "ministers of the word." John Mark's precise role is debated — catechetical assistant, logistical support, keeper of records — but his presence here establishes him as a witness to the very inception of organized Christian mission. His later departure (Acts 13:13) and the subsequent rift between Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:37–39) make this brief introduction quietly ominous, while his eventual rehabilitation (2 Timothy 4:11) illustrates the Gospel's own logic of failure, forgiveness, and restoration.
Catholic tradition reads these two verses as a paradigm of the Church's missionary nature, rooted in what the Second Vatican Council called the Church's identity as missio — a sending. Ad Gentes (§4) teaches that "the Church on earth is by its very nature missionary, since, according to the plan of the Father, it has its origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit." Acts 13:4 is a living icon of precisely this truth: the Spirit who proceeded from the Father and the Son now proceeds outward through the Church into the world.
The Church Fathers noted the theological precision of Luke's language. St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on Acts (Homily 28), marvels that Luke attributes the sending to the Holy Spirit directly — "not to men, but to the Spirit" — and uses this to argue for the full divinity and personal agency of the Third Person against pneumatomachian denials. The passage thus functions, in patristic exegesis, as a proof text for Trinitarian doctrine.
The synagogue strategy in verse 5 has particular significance for Catholic-Jewish relations and for the Church's self-understanding. The Catechism teaches that "the Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God's revelation in the Old Covenant" (CCC §839). Paul and Barnabas entering the synagogue do not enter enemy territory — they enter the antechamber of the new covenant, where the furniture of promise is already in place. Pope St. John Paul II's landmark address at the Great Synagogue of Rome (1986) spoke of Jews as "elder brothers" in faith, a relationship already adumbrated in this missionary practice.
Finally, the presence of John Mark as ὑπηρέτης echoes the Church's theology of apostolic collaboration: the mission is never solitary but always ecclesial, structured, and supported by a community of service.
For a contemporary Catholic, Acts 13:4–5 challenges a passive or merely receptive understanding of Christian life. The Holy Spirit does not simply dwell in us for our personal comfort — the Spirit sends. Every baptized Catholic shares in this missionary dynamic (CCC §1270); the question is whether we are, like Barnabas and Saul, responsive to it.
Concretely, notice the missionaries' method: they go first to the places of existing religious longing — the synagogues. Contemporary Catholics might ask: where in my own community are people already searching, already gathering around fragments of truth, already sustaining some form of worship or ethical seriousness? The New Evangelization, articulated by Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi and carried forward through Benedict XVI and Francis, calls Catholics not to invent the faith from scratch in every generation but to bring the fullness of Christ to places already marked by genuine spiritual seeking — secular universities, twelve-step meetings, grief support groups, interfaith prayer spaces.
John Mark's presence also consoles: beginners and assistants belong on the mission too. You do not need to be Paul to be essential to God's work.
Commentary
Acts 13:4 — "So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia."
Luke's careful phrase "sent out by the Holy Spirit" (ἐκπεμφθέντες ὑπὸ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος) is not merely a pious flourish — it is a precise theological claim. The grammar is a divine passive: the Holy Spirit is the acting subject; Barnabas and Saul are the ones acted upon. This directly echoes Acts 13:2, where the Spirit says "set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." The missionary commission, in Luke's understanding, does not originate in human strategy or apostolic ambition. It flows from the Trinitarian life itself, specifically from the Third Person who animates, directs, and sustains the Church's outward movement.
"They went down to Seleucia" is geographically precise. Seleucia Pieria was the port city of Antioch in Syria, located approximately 25 kilometers from the city, where the Orontes River meets the Mediterranean coast. The verb "went down" (κατῆλθον) reflects actual topography — Antioch sat on elevated ground above the coastal plain. Luke's attention to these physical details signals that the Gospel is entering real, mappable history. This is not myth or allegory; God is acting within specific places and through specific journeys.
"From there they sailed to Cyprus." Cyprus was the natural first destination for at least two reasons. First, it was Barnabas's homeland (Acts 4:36), and the early Christian community there had already been seeded by anonymous disciples fleeing the persecution after Stephen's martyrdom (Acts 11:19–20). The mission sails not into a void but into a community already begun by the Spirit's prior work. Second, Cyprus's strategic position — a large island in the eastern Mediterranean, a crossroads of sea trade — made it an ideal staging ground for a mission aimed ultimately at the wider Roman world.
Acts 13:5 — "When they were at Salamis, they proclaimed God's word in the Jewish synagogues."
Salamis was the largest city and principal port on the eastern coast of Cyprus, a prosperous commercial hub with a significant Jewish diaspora population. The choice to begin in the synagogues is theologically and rhetorically deliberate. It reflects the Pauline principle that will be made explicit later: the Gospel goes "to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). The synagogue represents the living continuity between the covenants — it is the place where the Hebrew Scriptures are read, where messianic expectation has been nurtured for centuries, and where, therefore, the proclamation of Jesus as the fulfillment of those Scriptures lands with the greatest immediate resonance. Paul and Barnabas are not abandoning Israel; they are announcing that Israel's hope has arrived.