St. Paul, named Saul at his
circumcision, a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, was born at Tarsus, the capitol
of Cilicia. He was a Roman citizen. He was brought up as a strict Jew, and
later became a violent persecutor of the Christians. While on his way to Damascus
to make new arrests of Christians, he was suddenly converted by a miraculous
apparition of Our Lord. From a fierce persecutor he became the great Apostle of
the Gentiles. He made three missionary journeys which brought him to the great
centers of Asia Minor and southern Europe, and made many converts. Fourteen of
his Epistles are found in the New Testament. He was beheaded in Rome in 66, and
his body is kept in the Basilica of St. Paul near the Ostian Way.
St. Paul
St. Paul was born at Tarsus, Cilicia, of Jewish parents
To complete his schooling, St.
Paul was sent to Jerusalem, where he sat at the feet of the learned Gamaliel
and was educated in the strict observance of the ancestral Law. Here he also
acquired a good knowledge of exegesis and was trained in the practice of
disputation. As a convinced and zealous Pharisee, he returned to Tarsus before
the public life of Christ opened in Palestine.
Sometime after the death of Our
Lord, St. Paul returned to Palestine. His profound conviction made his zeal
develop to a religious fanaticism against the infant Church. He took part in
the stoning of the first martyr, St. Stephen, and in the fierce persecution of
the Christians that followed. (source: http://www.americancatholic.org/)
Entrusted with a formal mission
from the high priest, he departed for Damascus to arrest the Christians there
and bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he was nearing Damascus, about noon, a
light from heaven suddenly blazed round him. Jesus with His glorified body
appeared to him and addressed him, turning him away from his apparently
successful career.
An immediate transformation was
wrought in the soul of St. Paul. He was suddenly converted to the Christian
Faith. He was baptized, changed his name from Saul to Paul, and began travelling
and preaching the Faith. He was martyred as an Apostle in Rome around 65 AD. — Excerpted from Lives of
the Saints
source: http://www.catholicculture.org/
Paul’s entire life can be
explained in terms of one experience—his meeting with Jesus on the road to
Damascus. In an instant, he saw that all the zeal of his dynamic personality
was being wasted, like the strength of a boxer swinging wildly. Perhaps he had
never seen Jesus, who was only a few years older. But he had acquired a
zealot’s hatred of all Jesus stood for, as he began to harass the Church:
“...entering house after house and dragging out men and women, he handed them
over for imprisonment” (Acts 8:3b). Now he himself was “entered,” possessed,
all his energy harnessed to one goal—being a slave of Christ in the ministry of
reconciliation, an instrument to help others experience the one Savior.
One sentence determined his
theology: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5b). Jesus was
mysteriously identified with people—the loving group of people Saul had been
running down like criminals. Jesus, he saw, was the mysterious fulfillment of
all he had been blindly pursuing.
From then on, his only work was
to “present everyone perfect in Christ. For this I labor and struggle, in
accord with the exercise of his power working within me” (Colossians 1:28b-29).
“For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the
Holy Spirit and [with] much conviction” (1 Thessalonians 1:5a).
Paul’s life became a tireless
proclaiming and living out of the message of the cross: Christians die
baptismally to sin and are buried with Christ; they are dead to all that is
sinful and unredeemed in the world. They are made into a new creation, already
sharing Christ’s victory and someday to rise from the dead like him. Through
this risen Christ the Father pours out the Spirit on them, making them
completely new.
So Paul’s great message to the
world was: You are saved entirely by God, not by anything you can do. Saving
faith is the gift of total, free, personal and loving commitment to Christ, a
commitment that then bears fruit in more “works” than the Law could ever
contemplate.
Comment:
Paul is undoubtedly hard to understand. His style often reflects the rabbinical style of argument of his day, and often his thought skips on mountaintops while we plod below. But perhaps our problems are accentuated by the fact that so many beautiful jewels have become part of the everyday coin in our Christian language (see quote, below).
Paul is undoubtedly hard to understand. His style often reflects the rabbinical style of argument of his day, and often his thought skips on mountaintops while we plod below. But perhaps our problems are accentuated by the fact that so many beautiful jewels have become part of the everyday coin in our Christian language (see quote, below).
Quote:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
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