Saint Paul (5-66)

The persecutor turned apostle

The paradox of Paul is written into his own memory: the man who held the garments of the stoners of Saint Stephen and who "ravaged the Church" became the most tireless of the preachers of Christ.^[6][7] Far from hiding this past, Paul makes it the foundation of his message: if God could save a persecutor, his grace is not earned, it is received.

"By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain." — Saint Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 15, 10^[8]

The Apostle of the Gentiles

Before Paul, the burning question of the primitive Church was whether one could be a Christian without first becoming a Jew. Paul settles it by his very life: the Gospel is offered to all peoples, without passing through circumcision or the whole Mosaic Law. This conviction, sealed at the Council of Jerusalem, makes him the missionary who opens Christianity to the Greco-Roman world.^[9][10]

The first theologian of the Church

Benedict XVI called him the "first theologian": not an abstract system, but a thinking born of the encounter with Christ and tempered in the fire of missionary controversies. Justification, grace, freedom, the Body of Christ, eschatology: the great categories of Christian theology receive in Paul their first written formulation.^[11]

A Jew of the diaspora, a Roman citizen

Paul was born at Tarsus, the prosperous metropolis of Cilicia, "a citizen of no mean city" in his own words.^[12] He belonged to a faithful Jewish family, of the tribe of Benjamin, and first bore the name of the first king of Israel, Saul.^[13] A decisive particularity: he was a Roman citizen by birth, a rare privilege that protected him to the very end and earned him, in the end, death by the sword rather than on the cross.^[14][15]

This threefold belonging — Jewish by faith, Greek by the culture of Tarsus, Roman by citizenship — made Paul the ideal bridge-builder to carry the Gospel from one world to another.

A Pharisee at the feet of Gamaliel

Sent young to Jerusalem, Paul was formed "at the feet of Gamaliel", the most respected of the Pharisaic doctors of his time, and received a rigorous education in the Law of the Fathers.^[16] He ranked himself among the Pharisees, the most zealous and observant current of Judaism.^[17] This formation is no detail: Paul knew the Scriptures from within, and it is that same understanding of the Scriptures that he turned entirely toward Christ.

Saul the persecutor

The zeal of the young Pharisee set him against the newborn sect of the disciples of Jesus. He approved the killing of Saint Stephen, the first martyr, and launched a methodical persecution: he "entered house after house, dragged off men and women and committed them to prison".^[18] He himself would sum it up later, softening nothing:

"You have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it." — Saint Paul, Letter to the Galatians 1, 13^[19]

The account in Acts

On the road to Damascus, where he was going with letters to arrest the Christians, Saul was struck down by a light from heaven. A voice addressed him: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" — "Who are you, Lord?" — "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."^[20] The persecutor rose blind; three days later, at Damascus, the disciple Ananias laid his hands on him, he recovered his sight and received baptism.

The Acts of the Apostles judged the event so foundational that they tell it three times (chapters 9, 22 and 26), a unique fact in the book.^[21][22][23]

Paul's interpretation: death and resurrection

Paul himself never described that moment as a mere change of opinion. For him, it was an objective encounter with the Risen One, received as the last of the paschal apparitions: "Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me."^[24] Benedict XVI insists on this point:

"This turning point in his life, this transformation of his entire being, was not the fruit of a psychological process, of a maturing or intellectual and moral evolution; it came from outside: it was not the fruit of his thought but of the encounter with Jesus Christ. In this sense it was not merely a conversion, a maturing of his self, but it was death and resurrection for himself: he died to his own life and was born to a new life with the Risen Christ." — Benedict XVI, general audience of 3 September 2008^[25]

What Paul counted as gains, he henceforth counted as nothing for the sake of Christ:

"But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. [...] For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ." — Saint Paul, Letter to the Philippians 3, 7-8^[26]

The hidden years: Arabia, Damascus and Tarsus

Contrary to the image of an apostle launched at once onto the roads, Paul knew long years of withdrawal. He went into Arabia, returned to Damascus, "went up" to Jerusalem only three years later, saw no one there but Peter and James, then withdrew for years to Tarsus.^[27] That hidden time, far from being lost, is when his theology matured in silence before bursting forth into mission.

Antioch and the first journey

It was at Antioch in Syria — where the disciples were first called "Christians" — that Paul, summoned by Barnabas, entered the great mission.^[28] About 45-49, Paul and Barnabas travelled through Cyprus and then Asia Minor (Pisidia, Lycaonia), founding communities and already enduring persecutions and stonings.^[29][30]

The Council of Jerusalem (about 49)

Success among the pagans raised a crisis: should circumcision and the Law of Moses be imposed on them? Gathered at Jerusalem, Peter, James, Paul and Barnabas decided: the converted pagans are not subject to the yoke of the Mosaic Law. That Council of Jerusalem, the first assembly of the Church, validated Paul's mission and set the Gospel free for the nations.^[31][32]

Second journey: the Gospel crosses into Europe

On the second journey (about 50-52), a vision at Troas — "Come over to Macedonia and help us" — brought Paul across the threshold of Europe.^[33] At Philippi he founded his dearest community; at Athens he preached the "unknown God" before the Areopagus; at Corinth he stayed eighteen months and forged a decisive bond with that turbulent Church.^[34][35]

"I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth." — Saint Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 3, 6^[36]

Third journey: Ephesus

The third journey (about 53-57) centred on Ephesus, where Paul stayed nearly three years and radiated over the whole province of Asia, up to the riot of the silversmiths of Diana.^[37] From there, or from that period, came several of his greatest letters.

Chronological markers

The Pauline corpus

Tradition attributes to Paul thirteen letters of the New Testament, to which is added, by ancient and debated attribution, the Epistle to the Hebrews. They are classically divided as follows:

These letters are not abstract treatises: they are living interventions, dictated in the heat of action, answering the concrete crises of the communities. That is what gives them their strength and warmth.^[47][48]

Justification by faith

The heart of the Pauline preaching, above all in Romans and Galatians, is that man is justified not by the works of the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ, the free gift of grace.^[49][50] The Catholic Church firmly holds that this justifying faith is not a mere fruitless trust: it is a faith "working through love" (Galatians 5, 6), inseparable from the love and good works it begets.^[51][52] Against any reading that would set Paul against James, the Catholic tradition reads the two together: living faith is active faith.

Christ, the centre of all

All of Paul's thought is drawn to a single reality: Christ, dead and risen. "For to me to live is Christ" (Philippians 1, 21).^[53] Benedict XVI sums up that unity:

"For us too, Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new morality. We are Christians only if we encounter Christ." — Benedict XVI, general audience of 3 September 2008^[54]

The Church, Body of Christ

To Paul the Church owes one of its profoundest images: that of the Body, of which Christ is the head and the baptized the members, diverse and united. "Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it."^[55] This doctrine, taken up in Ephesians and Colossians, grounds the communion of the Church far beyond a mere association of individuals.

The hymn to charity

In the middle of a letter of correction addressed to the Corinthians, Paul interrupts the argument for the most famous of all his texts, the hymn of chapter 13 — a spiritual summit where he subordinates every gift, even martyrdom, to love:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong. [...] Love never ends." — Saint Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 13, 1.8^[56]

"It is no longer I who live"

At the heart of Paul's holiness lies a substitution: his own life gives way to the life of Christ in him. The formula of Galatians — "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2, 20) — is not a pious metaphor but the description of his real existence, even in his chains.^[57] Pauline holiness is not man's effort perfecting himself, but Christ taking all the room.

The folly of the Cross

Paul refuses to preach a decorative Gospel. He puts at the centre what the world holds for scandal and folly: a crucified Messiah.

"But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, [...] Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." — Saint Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 1, 23-24^[58]

The thorn in the flesh: strength in weakness

Paul confides that he was given a mysterious "thorn in the flesh", a trial from which he three times begged to be delivered. Christ's answer became one of the keys of every Christian spirituality of trial:

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. [...] For when I am weak, then I am strong." — Saint Paul, Second Letter to the Corinthians 12, 9-10^[59]

The good fight

At the end of his life, in what tradition reads as his testament to Timothy, Paul faces death with the serenity of the athlete reaching the goal:

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness." — Saint Paul, Second Letter to Timothy 4, 7-8^[60]

Arrest at Jerusalem and imprisonment at Caesarea

Back at Jerusalem about 57-58, Paul was arrested after a riot in the Temple. As a Roman citizen, he escaped lynching and scourging and was transferred to Caesarea, where he remained a prisoner for about two years under the procurators Felix and then Festus.^[61][62]

The appeal to Caesar and the shipwreck

To escape a rigged trial at Jerusalem, Paul used his citizen's right and appealed to Caesar: "I appeal to Caesar."^[63] Embarked for Rome, he suffered a terrible shipwreck at Malta, told with striking precision by Acts.^[64] He finally reached Rome about 60-61.

The Roman imprisonment

At Rome, Paul lived two years in guarded custody, lodged apart with a soldier to guard him, yet free to preach: the Acts of the Apostles closes on the image of a prisoner proclaiming the Kingdom "with all boldness and without hindrance."^[65] Tradition generally admits a release, a possible journey toward the West, then a second arrest leading to martyrdom.^[66][67]

The ancient sources

The martyrdom of Paul at Rome is one of the best attested facts of primitive Christian history. As early as the 90s, Clement of Rome wrote to the Corinthians that Paul, "after teaching righteousness to the whole world and reaching the farthest limits of the West, bore witness before the rulers."^[68] At the start of the 2nd century, the Roman priest Gaius pointed to the "trophies" of the apostles at the Vatican and on the Via Ostiense; Tertullian recalled that Paul, a Roman citizen, was executed by the sword; and in the 4th century, Eusebius of Caesarea placed his death at the end of Nero's reign.^[69][70]

The beheading on the Via Ostiense

As a Roman citizen, Paul could not be crucified like Peter: he was beheaded, a death deemed more honourable. Tradition locates the execution at the Aquae Salviae, south of Rome, a place venerated today as Tre Fontane ("Three Fountains").^[71] Benedict XVI recalled the meaning of that end:

"After preaching justice to the whole world, and after reaching the ends of the West, he suffered martyrdom before the rulers." — Benedict XVI quoting Clement of Rome, general audience of 4 February 2009^[72]

The tomb and the basilica

Paul's body was buried not far from the place of his execution, on the Via Ostiense. Over his tomb would rise one of the great basilicas of Rome: Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Excavations conducted beneath the high altar confirmed the existence of an ancient sarcophagus long venerated as that of the Apostle. The archaeological dossier of the tomb is treated in the dedicated article: Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.^[73]

A saint of the origins

Paul was the object of no canonization trial in the modern sense — that procedure is several centuries later. Like the apostles and the first martyrs, he belongs to the saints recognized by the immemorial tradition and universal cult of the Church, from the earliest centuries.^[74] His feast, shared with Peter, on 29 June, is one of the oldest of the Roman calendar; 25 January separately celebrates the Conversion of Saint Paul.

Patron and universal figure

Paul is invoked as patron of theologians, missionaries and the Catholic press, and he shares with Peter the patronage of the city of Rome. The solemn celebration of the "Pauline Year" (2008-2009), for the presumed bimillennium of his birth, showed the living relevance of his figure for the whole Church.^[75]

Paul in art

Christian iconography fixed Paul's features very early: a man with a bare forehead and dark beard, holding the sword of his martyrdom and the book or scroll of his letters. Those attributes distinguish him at once from Peter and his keys, and make him, in the Catholic imagination, the apostle of the Word and of the combat of faith.

An ancient literary portrait points in the same direction without being reduced to it: in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, an apocryphal narrative of the 2nd century, a disciple describes Paul with "a bald head, a long and broad nose, black eyebrows, thick and joined, broad shoulders, bowed legs"; the authors of the Dictionnaire des personnages de l'Évangile selon Maria Valtorta relate this description to the one attributed to Maria Valtorta, without making it a demonstrated identity: this comparison is to be read at its proper level of received private revelation.^[76]

• Saint Peter — the other pillar of Rome, co-patron of the city and companion of the feast on 29 June.
• Saint Stephen — the first martyr, at whose stoning the young Saul was present.
• Saint Luke the Evangelist — companion of Paul and author of the Acts of the Apostles, the main source of his life.
• The Council of Jerusalem — the first assembly of the Church, which validated Paul's mission to the nations.
• The persecutions of Nero — the setting of his Roman martyrdom.
• Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls — the tomb of the Apostle and its archaeological dossier.