Acts 25:22–27

Acts 25:22 — "I also would like to hear the man myself." Agrippa II (Marcus Julius Agrippa) was the son of Herod Agrippa I (who had executed James and imprisoned Peter, Acts 12) and the great-grandson of Herod the Great. As a client king deeply familiar with Jewish customs and Scripture, his curiosity about Paul is theologically loaded — this is not mere courtly entertainment. The word "also" (Greek: kagō) subtly echoes Bernice's implied presence and perhaps other conversations already circulating about Paul. Agrippa's request sets the entire juridical machinery into motion, yet in Luke's narrative theology, it is ultimately God who orchestrates this encounter. Paul is not dragged before Agrippa by accident; he is providentially placed there.

Acts 25:23 — "with great pomp" (phantasia) Luke employs the rare Greek word phantasia — literally "display" or "spectacle" — to describe the ostentatious procession of Agrippa and Bernice. Military tribunes (chiliarchs), the leading men of Caesarea, the full apparatus of Roman imperial and Jewish client power fill the hall of audience. The contrast Luke intends is unmistakable: Paul, a prisoner in chains, is about to speak the Word of God to the most powerful room in the region. The word phantasia is pointed — it suggests the hollow theatricality of worldly glory. Luke, writing for a community under pressure, assures his readers that human pomp is precisely that: appearance without ultimate substance. The Church Fathers, particularly John Chrysostom in his Homilies on Acts, noted this contrast with relish, seeing in Paul's chains a greater dignity than in Agrippa's purple.

Acts 25:24 — Festus's public address: "all the multitude of the Jews petitioned me…crying that he ought not to live any longer." Festus accurately summarizes the sustained, ferocious campaign against Paul that has stretched from Jerusalem (Acts 21–23) through Caesarea. The phrase "ought not to live any longer" (mē dein zēn autōn) is stark — it is a demand for execution, not mere imprisonment. Festus is in an awkward diplomatic position: he has a prisoner whom Jewish authorities want dead, whom he himself cannot convict, and whom Roman law (via Paul's provocatio ad Caesarem, his appeal to Caesar) has effectively removed from his jurisdiction. He is not so much conducting a trial as performing a public accounting of his own administrative impasse.

Acts 25:25 — "I found that he had committed nothing worthy of death." This is the third consecutive declaration of Paul's innocence by Roman authority — Lysias (Acts 23:29), Festus himself in private conversation with Agrippa (Acts 25:18), and now publicly before the assembled court. In Luke's carefully constructed legal narrative, this triple attestation functions like the three-fold declaration of Jesus' innocence by Pilate (Luke 23:4, 14, 22). The typological resonance is deliberate and profound: the servant shares the pattern of his Master. Paul, like Christ, is innocent before Roman law yet handed over by the pressure of Jewish leaders. This parallelism is central to Luke's theology of apostolic witness (martyria).

Acts 25:26 — "I have no certain thing to write to my lord." The title kyrios (lord) for the emperor — here almost certainly Nero — is theologically charged when read in the full arc of Luke-Acts, where Kyrios is the title par excellence of Jesus Christ. Festus's confession of ignorance ("nothing certain") is ironic: he sits in judgment over a man whose message concerns the One True Lord, yet Festus cannot even frame the question properly. He needs Agrippa to help him articulate what the dispute is about. This ignorance underscores that the Gospel transcends the categories of Roman jurisprudence — it cannot be neatly filed as sedition or impiety because it is categorically new.

Acts 25:27 — "it seems to me unreasonable…not to specify the charges." Festus's final line is almost comic in its bureaucratic anxiety — he is embarrassed to send a prisoner to Caesar without a clear dossier. Yet for Luke, this procedural concern is the hinge that opens Paul's great defense speech in chapter 26. God uses Roman administrative protocol to give His apostle a hearing before the most prominent audience in the eastern empire. The very machinery of worldly power, in its confusion, becomes the vehicle of proclamation.

From a Catholic theological perspective, this passage is a masterclass in what the Catechism calls divine Providence operating through secondary causes (CCC 306–308). God does not override the free decisions of Agrippa, Festus, or the Jewish accusers; He works through them — through Agrippa's curiosity, Festus's bureaucratic dilemma, and Rome's legal procedures — to place His apostle before kings, precisely as Christ foretold: "You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles" (Matthew 10:18).

The Church Fathers saw in Paul's chains before Agrippa a fulfillment of what St. Ignatius of Antioch would later call the apostolic witness sealed in suffering. St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Acts, Homily 51) meditates on the irony that Paul in bonds possesses a freedom and dignity that Agrippa in purple cannot match — a freedom rooted in what Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes (41) calls the dignity that "transcends all earthly categories."

The triple declaration of Paul's innocence also carries deep ecclesiological weight. The Church has consistently read Paul's trials as a type (typos) of the Church's own encounter with worldly power across the centuries. Just as Paul was falsely accused yet vindicated by truth, the Church — in the teaching of Lumen Gentium (8) — is called to bear witness even when misunderstood or persecuted, trusting that truth, not political power, is the final arbiter. The scene also prefigures the martyrological tradition: the Christian before civil authority is not merely a defendant but a witness (martys), whose very presence in that hall is a proclamation.

Contemporary Catholics face their own, often less dramatic, version of this scene: moments when faith must be articulated before skeptical or hostile audiences — in workplaces, courtrooms, legislative chambers, academic settings, or family gatherings. This passage offers three concrete spiritual lessons. First, trust Providence in adversity: Paul did not engineer this hearing; God arranged it through the curious question of a king. When circumstances seem to trap us, they may in fact be positioning us. Second, do not be seduced by pomp: The phantasia of power — institutional prestige, cultural cachet, social approval — is precisely that, a phantasm. Paul's chains carry more eternal weight than Agrippa's court robes. Catholics tempted to trim their witness for acceptance in elite circles should feel the sting of this contrast. Third, innocence patiently borne is itself testimony: Festus's repeated public declarations of Paul's innocence were not won by Paul's political maneuvering but by his consistent, truthful conduct. Living with integrity before the watching world remains the most powerful apologetic available to any Catholic today.