Saint Paul, Apostle
By www.catholicculture.org
The historic records bearing on St. Paul are
fuller than those for any Scriptural saint. We have Paul's own wonderful
writings, the fourteen letters included in the New Testament, which outline his
missionary journeys, exhort and admonish the various Christian congregations,
discuss ethics and doctrinal matters; and in the midst of all this we get a
revelation of the man himself, his inner character, his problems and fears. St.
Luke's Acts of the Apostles and certain apocryphal books are other sources of
our knowledge of St. Paul. Of all the founders of the Church, Paul was perhaps
the most brilliant and many-sided, the broadest in outlook, and therefore the
best endowed to carry Christianity to alien lands and peoples.
Born into a well-to-do Jewish family of Tarsus,
the son of a Roman citizen, Saul (as we shall call him until after his
conversion) was sent to Jerusalem to be trained in the famous rabbinical school
headed by Gamaliel. Here, in addition to studying the Law and the Prophets, he
learned a trade, as was the custom. Young Saul chose the trade of tent-making.
Although his upbringing was orthodox, while still at home in Tarsus he had come
under the liberalizing Hellenic influences which at this time had permeated all
levels of urban society in Asia Minor. Thus the Judaic, Roman, and Greek
traditions and cultures all had a part in shaping this great Apostle, who was
so different in status and temperament from the humble fishermen of Jesus'
initial band of disciples. His missionary journeys were to give him the
flexibility and the deep sympathy that made him the ideal human instrument for
preaching Christ's Gospel of world brotherhood.
In the year 35 Saul appears as a self-righteous
young Pharisee, almost fanatically anti-Christian. He believed that the
trouble-making new sect should be stamped out, its adherents punished. We are
told in Acts vii that he was present, although not a participator in the
stoning, when Stephen, the first martyr, met his death. It was very soon
afterwards that Paul experienced the revelation which was to transform his
life. On the road to the Syrian city of Damascus, where he was going to
continue his persecutions against the Christians, he was struck blind. On
arriving in Damascus, there followed in dramatic sequence his sudden
conversion, the cure of his blindness by the disciple Ananias, and his baptism.
Paul accepted eagerly the commission to preach the Gospel of Christ, but like
many another called to a great task he felt his unworthiness and withdrew from
the world to spend three years in "Arabia" in meditation and prayer
before beginning his apostolate. From the moment of his return, Paul—for he had
now assumed this Roman name—never paused in his labors. It proved to be the
most extraordinary career of preaching, writing, and church-founding of which
we have record. The extensive travels by land and sea, so replete with
adventure, are to be traced by anyone who reads carefully the New Testament
letters. We cannot be sure, however, that the letters and records now extant
reveal the full and complete chronicle of Paul's activities. He himself tells us
he was stoned, thrice scourged, thrice shipwrecked, endured hunger and thirst,
sleepless nights, perils and hardships; besides these physical trials, he
suffered many disappointments and almost constant anxieties over the weak and
widely-scattered communities of Christians.
Paul began his preaching in Damascus. Here the
anger of the orthodox Jews against this renegade was so great that he had to
make his escape by having himself let down from the city wall in a basket.
Going down to Jerusalem, he was there looked on with suspicion by the Jewish
Christians, for they could not at first believe that he who had so lately been
their persecutor had turned advocate. Back in his native city of Tarsus once
more, he was joined by Barnabas, and together they journeyed to Syrian
Antioch,[1] where they were so successful in finding followers that a church,
later to become famous in the annals of early Christianity, was founded. It was
here that the disciples of Jesus were first given the name of Christians (from
the Greek <christos>, anointed). After again returning to Jerusalem to
bring aid to members of the sect who were suffering from famine, these two
missionaries went back to Antioch, then sailed to the island of Cyprus; while
there they converted the Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus. Once more on the
mainland of Asia Minor, they crossed the Taurus Mountains and visited many
towns of the interior, particularly those having Jewish settlements. It was
Paul's general practice in such places first to visit the synagogues and preach
to the Jews; if rejected by them, he would then preach to the Gentiles. At
Antioch in Pisidia Paul delivered a memorable discourse to the Jews, concluding
with these words (Acts xiii, 46-47): "It was necessary that the word of
God should be spoken to you first, but since you reject it and judge yourselves
unworthy of eternal life, behold, we now turn to the Gentiles. For so the Lord
commanded us, I have set thee for a light to the Gentiles, to be a means of
salvation to the very ends of the earth." After this, the Jews drove Paul
and Barnabas out from their midst, and a little later the missionaries were
back in Jerusalem, where the elders were debating the attitude of the Christian
Church, still predominantly Jewish in membership, towards Gentile converts. The
question of circumcision proved troublesome, for most Jews thought it important
that Gentiles should submit to this requirement of Jewish law; Paul's side, the
more liberal, standing against circumcision, won out eventually.
The second missionary journey, which lasted from
49 to 52, took Paul and Silas, his new assistant, to Phrygia and Galatia, to
Troas, and across to the mainland of Europe, to Philippi in Macedonia. The
physician Luke was now a member of the party, and in the book of Acts he gives
us the record. They made their way to Thessalonica, then down to Athens and
Corinth. At Athens Paul preached in the Areopagus, and we know that some of the
Stoics and Epicureans heard him and debated with him informally, attracted by
his vigorous intellect, his magnetic personality, and the ethical teachings
which, in many respects, were not unlike their own. Passing over to Corinth, he
found himself in the very heart of the Graeco-Roman world, and his letters of
this period show that he is aware of the great odds against him, of the
ceaseless struggle to be waged in overcoming pagan skepticism and indifference.
He nevertheless stayed at Corinth for eighteen months, and met with
considerable success. Two valuable workers there, Aquila and Priscilla, husband
and wife, returned with him to Asia. It was during his first winter at Corinth
that Paul wrote the earliest extant missionary letters. They show his supreme
concern for conduct and his belief in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which
gives men power for good.
The third missionary journey covered the period
of 52 to 56. At Ephesus, an important city of Lydia, where the cult of the
Greek-Ionic goddess Diana was very popular, Paul raised a disturbance against
the cult and the trade in silver images of the goddess which flourished there.
Later, in Jerusalem, he caused a commotion by visiting the temple; he was
arrested, roughly handled, and bound with chains; but when he was brought
before the tribune, he defended himself in a way that impressed his captors. He
was taken to Caesarea, for it was rumored that some Jews at Jerusalem, who
falsely accused him of having admitted Gentiles to the temple, were plotting to
kill him. He was kept in prison at Caesarea awaiting trial for about two years,
under the proconsuls Felix and Festus. The Roman governors apparently wished to
avoid trouble with both Jews and Christians and so postponed judgment from
month to month. Paul at last appealed to the Emperor, demanding the legal right
of a Roman citizen to have his case heard by Nero himself. He was placed in the
custody of a centurion, who took him to Rome. The Acts of the Apostles leave
him in the imperial city, awaiting his hearing.
It would appear that Paul's appeal was
successful, for there is some evidence of another missionary journey, probably
to Macedonia. On this last visit to the various Christian communities, it is
believed that he appointed Titus bishop in Crete and Timothy at Ephesus.
Returning to Rome, he was once more arrested, and after two years in chains
suffered martyrdom, presumably at about the same time as the Apostle Peter,
bishop of the Roman Church. Inscriptions of the second and third century in the
catacombs give evidence of a cult of SS. Peter and Paul. This devotion has
never diminished in popularity. In Christian art St. Paul is usually depicted
as a bald man with a black beard, rather stocky, but vigorous and intense. His
relics are venerated in the basilica of St. Paul and in the Lateran Church at
Rome.
Because of the pressure of his work, Paul usually
dictated his letters, writing the salutation in his own hand. The most quoted
of New Testament writers, Paul has given us a wealth of counsel, aphorisms, and
ethical teachings; he had the power of expressing spiritual truths in the
simplest of words, and this, rather than the building up of a systematic
theology, was his contribution to the early Church. A man of action, Paul
reveals the dynamic of his whole career when he writes, "I press on
towards the goal, to the prize of God's heavenly calling in Christ Jesus."
Although he himself was forever pressing onwards, his letters often invoked a
spirit of quiet meditation, as when he ends his epistle to the Philippians with
the beautiful lines: "Whatever things are true, whatever honorable, whatever
just, whatever holy, whatever lovable, whatever of good repute, if there be any
virtue, if anything worthy of praise, think upon these things."
Endnotes
·
Antioch, in northwestern
Syria, founded by one of the generals of Alexander the Great in about 300 B.C.,
had become a rich and beautiful city, ranking dose to Alexandria under the
Roman Empire.
·
Saint Paul, Apostle to the
Gentiles. Scriptural Saint. Celebration of Feast Day is June 30.
·
Taken from "Lives of
Saints", Published by John J. Crawley & Co., Inc.
This item 8218 digitally provided courtesy of
CatholicCulture.org
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