Sunday, 26 January, Conversion of St. Paul, the Apostle

Readings — Acts 22:3-16 or Acts 9:1-22; Ps. 117:1, 2; Mk. 16:15-18.

Today is also the 209th Anniversary of the Founding of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) by St, Eugene de Mazenod.

Laudetur Iesus Christus et Maria Immaculata!

Some Notes on St Paul (born c. 4 BC, died c. 62-64 AD in Rome)

1. St. Paul is often considered to be the most important person after Jesus and Mary in the history of the Church. His surviving Letters had enormous influence on Christianity. Of the 27 books in the New Testament, 13 are attributed to him and about half of the Acts of the Apostles deals with Paul's life and works.

He was a Greek-speaking Jew from Asia Minor and was born in Tarsus, a major city in eastern Cilicia, part of the Roman province of Syria. The main cities of Syria, Damascus and Antioch, played a prominent part in his life. He was converted to faith in Jesus Christ about 33 AD.

2. Paul was a tent maker and his Greek was "koine," or common Greek. He was a member of the Pharisees and therefore, unlike the Saducees, he believed in life after death and the resurrection of the dead. He also believed in the "traditions" of the Pharisees.

By his own account, Paul was the best Pharisee of his generation (see Phil. 3:4-6; Gal. 1:13-14). But he claimed to be the least of the Apostles of Christ (see 2 Cor. 11:22-23; 1 Cor. 15:9-10), and attributed his successes to the grace of God.

3. Paul spent much of his life persecuting the nascent Christian movement. As the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was being stoned to death, Saul watched the cloaks of the persecutors (Acts 7:58). He believed that Jewish converts to the new Christian movement were not sufficiently observant of the Jewish Law and that Jewish converts mingled too freely with Gentile Christians.

He certainly would not believe that God chose to favor Jesus by raising him before the final Judgment. His encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus transformed him completely.

4. The description of Paul's conversion is found in the Letters and in Acts. In Gal. 1:11-16, he says, "I wish you to know, brothers and sisters, that the Gospel I preach is not of human origin.... I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.... But when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate tesponse was not to consult any human being."

According to Acts, Paul began his persecutions in Jerusalem, contrary to his own assertion that he did not know any of the Jerusalem followers of Christ until well after his own conversion (see Gal. 1:4-17).