St Paul (died c65ad)
Paul started life with another name: Saul. This great apostle to the Gentiles was a Jew born at Tarsus in Cilicia, and brought up in Jerusalem at the school of Gamaliel as a Pharisee. His father was a Roman citizen, of a family in which piety was hereditary. So keen was Paul to defend the god of his fathers that he became a persecutor of Christianity, and even took part in the stoning of Stephen. He hunted Christians down and imprisoned them, and it was while on his way to persecute more Christians in Damascus that he was suddenly given his vision of Christ.
It was the decisive moment of Paul’s life – Paul suddenly realised that Jesus was truly the Messiah, and the Son of God, and that He was calling Paul to bring the Christian faith to the Gentiles. Paul was then healed of his temporary blindness, baptised, and retired to Arabia for about three years of prayer and solitude, before returning to Damascus.
From then on Paul seems to have lived a life full of hazard and hardship. He made many Jewish enemies, who stoned him, and wanted to kill him. Nevertheless, Paul made three great missionary journeys, first to Cyprus, then to Asia Minor and eastern Greece, and lastly to Ephesus, where he wrote 1 Corinthians, then to Macedonia and Achaia, where he wrote Romans, before returning to Jerusalem.
After stonings, beatings and imprisonment in Jerusalem he was sent to Rome for trial as a Roman citizen. On the way he was shipwrecked at Malta. When he finally reached Rome he was put under house-arrest for two years, during which time he wrote the four ‘captivity’ epistles. Later Paul may have revisited Ephesus and even have reached Spain. Tradition tells he was eventually martyred at Rome during the persecution of Nero, being beheaded (as a Roman citizen) at Tre Fontane and buried where the basilica of St Paul ‘outside the walls’ now stands. He was sixty eight years of age.
Paul was not only a tireless missionary, but a great thinker. His epistles played a major part in the later development of Christian theology. Paul’s key ideas include:
that Redemption is only through faith in Christ, who abolished the old Law and began the era of the Spirit;
that Christ is not just the Messiah, but the eternal, pre-existent Son of God, exalted after the Resurrection to God’s right-hand;
that the Church is the body of Christ;
that the believers live in Christ and will eventually be transformed by the final resurrection.
It is difficult to overemphasise the influence of Paul on Christian thought and history: he had a major effect on Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and others. Paul was venerated from very early times both in the Liturgy and in private prayers, as testified by Greek and Latin graffiti in the catacombs of the early 3rd century.
Paul was small in stature, bald and bandy-legged, with a long face, long nose and eyebrows meeting over deep-set eyes. He was afflicted with an illness that is difficult to diagnose, but despite this infirmity Paul must undoubtedly have been possessed of great physical strength to have sustained so long such superhuman labours. His usual emblems are a sword and a book.
