First Reading: Acts 17:15, 22--18:1

¹⁵ Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens; and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.
²² So Paul, standing in the middle of the Are-op’agus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
²³ For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, `To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
<sup>24</sup> The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man,
<sup>25</sup> nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.
<sup>26</sup> And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation,
<sup>27</sup> that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us,
<sup>28</sup> for `In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your poets have said, `For we are indeed his offspring.’
²⁹ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man.
³⁰ The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent,
³¹ because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead.”
³² Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.”
³³ So Paul went out from among them.
³⁴ But some men joined him and believed, among them Dionys’ius the Are-op’agite and a woman named Dam’aris and others with them.
¹ After this he left Athens and went to Corinth.