A Catholic Notebook: St. Paul

Showing posts with label St. Paul. Show all posts

Friday, February 11, 2011

St. Paul and Fortitude

My son's report for Virtue Club:

St Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologica, describes the gift of fortitude like this:

With the gift of fortitude/courage, we overcome our fear and are willing to take risks as a follower of Jesus Christ. A person with courage is willing to stand up for what is right in the sight of God, even if it means accepting rejection, verbal abuse, or even physical harm and death.

St. Paul was a great example of fortitude. You remember St Paul . . . .

He was born at Tarsus in Cilicia which is now Turkey. He lived around the time of Jesus but never met Him. Paul was first called Saul. As a young man, he was a very bright student of the Hebrew religion.
He hated the Christians. When he grew older he tortured and harassed the followers of Jesus. He was even at the stoning of St. Stephen the martyr.

In the Bible, in the Acts of the Apostles, you can read about Saul's amazing conversion (chapters 9, 22, 26).
What happened?

The Conversion of St. Paul by Peter Paul Rubens

One day, Paul was on his way to the city of Damascus to hunt down more Christians. Suddenly, a great light shone all around him and he was knocked to the ground. He was struck blind; and he heard a voice say, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"

Saul answered, "Who are you, Sir?" And the voice said, "I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting." Saul was shocked and confused. After a few seconds, he asked, "What do you want me to do?" Jesus told him to continue on to Damascus and there he would be told what to do.

At that moment, through the power of God, Saul received the gift to believe in Jesus. Weak and trembling, he reached out for help and his companions led him into Damascus. The light had blinded him temporarily. But now that he was blind he could really "see" the truth.

Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da
The Conversion of Saint Paul
painted 1600-1601

And Jesus had come personally to meet him, to invite him to conversion. Saul became a great lover of Jesus. He was baptized and changed his name to Paul to show that he was a changed person. Now he thought only of helping everyone know and love Jesus, the Savior.

We know Saul by his Roman name of Paul. He is called "the apostle." He traveled all over the world, preaching the Good News and led so many people to Jesus. He worked and suffered greatly.

He was stoned, beaten and even put into prison. Even though his enemies tried to kill him several times - nothing could stop him. That is a great example of fortitude (courage).

When he was old and tired, he was once again put in prison and sentenced to die. Still St. Paul was happy to suffer and even die for Christ. (Colossians 1:24 "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking ¹⁴ in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church")

This great apostle wrote wonderful letters to the Christians. They are in the Bible. These letters, called epistles, are read often during the Liturgy of the Word at Mass.

Here is a list of the Epistles of Paul in the Bible. (I am still working on details about each Epistle)

First Thessalonians
Second Thessalonians
First Corinthians	On Paul's first visit to Corinth he stays a year and a half (Acts 18:5)
Second Corinthians	Corinth is a wealthy, immoral city that is twice evangelized by Paul
Galatians
Romans
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
Philemon
Hebrews
Titus
First Timothy
Second Timothy

SOURCES:
SauldieBibleStudy (Protestant)
Catholic Notebook
NAB @ the USCCB site
Communio
Holy Spirit Interactive
Chronology of St. Paul's Epistles (Protestant)

Sunday, September 12, 2010

But by the Grace of God - I Am What I Am

Ask the typical (over 40? year old) who said, "I am what I am!" And, I'll betcha the quick response will be, "Popeye the Sailor Man!"

His most remembered tag line seems to be, "I yam what I yam and tha's all I yam! I'm Popeye the Sailor Man!"
Popeye is an underdog with a long fuse and a keen sense of fair play. Everyone identifies with him when he finally says, "Tha's all I can stands, and I can't stands no more!"

I like to tell myself that Popeye read the Bible. One of his Biblical heroes must have been St. Paul. And I prefer to imagine that he, at least, thought, "But by the grace of God," -- every single time he uttered, "I yam what I yam!"

But I admit, I sure wish Popeye had boldly stated, "But by the grace of God!!" before finishing with, "I yam who I yam."

1 Corinthians 15: 9-10
9 -For I am the least of the apostles, ⁴ not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
10 -But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.

I don't know about you but right now my prayer is, "But by the grace of God, I am. Dear Lord, help me to be what you want me to be."
Because I know I could be so much more for God. I am ever grateful for his grace.
I long to be as faithful as Samuel -- "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening."
But the longing is not enough -- all that God gives me is not enough --- unless I accept, submit and stay the course.
Have I said how grateful I am for God's Grace? But by the grace of God, I am!

H/T: Faith Flaherty and Arise with St. Mary's Parish

SOURCE:
1Corinthians, chapter 15 (USCCB -NAB)
footnote⁴ [9-11] A persecutor may have appeared disqualified from apostleship, but in fact God's grace has qualified him.
Cf the remarks in 2 Cor about his qualifications (2 Cor 2:16; 3:5) and his greater labors (2 Cor 11:23). These verses are parenthetical, but a nerve has been touched (the references to his abnormal birth and his activity as a persecutor may echo taunts from Paul's opponents), and he is instinctively moved to self-defense.

This clip is from 1933. (Before you click, be warned that it is racist by 2010 standards)

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Ever been confused by St. Paul's writings?

by Mark Hart

When I began reading Scripture I was constantly confused by St. Paul's writings. It was like he was speaking in a riddle. I was comforted to find out that even St. Peter occasionally had a hard time (2 Peter 3:15) with Paul's intense compression of language and depth of his writings.

For this reason, my friend Chris and I wrote a book a couple years back called "Sword of the Spirit: A Beginner's Guide to St. Paul."

Here's a free pdf download of one section of the appendix, where we give you an overview of each of Paul's epistles and "what to look for" as you pray through them:

http://c1514072.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/SwordSpirit_WhatHeWrote.pdf

The final book - available at www.lifeteen.com/store - offers a look at St. Paul's theology and a background on his teachings. Additionally, the full appendix gives an overview of each of his letters (above), maps of his travels, a concordance with his insights on specific topics, a guide for reading and more. The introduction to the book was even written by Dr. Scott Hahn, a brilliant Scripture scholar and trusted friend.

I just wanted to offer you this free overview of St. Paul's writings because I wish I'd had something similar many years ago.

As always, my deepest prayer is that this blesses your prayer life and the greater Kingdom in some way.

May God bless you always and all ways!

Mark

Monday, January 25, 2010

The Conversion of St. Paul

JUAN ANTONIO FRIAS Y ESCALANTE

The Road to Damascus

Saul set out on the road to Damascus with death in his heart. He could not know that he was about to keep a rendezvous with Life itself.

To Saul's mind "Pharisaism or Jesus" was the sole issue. And Saul the Pharisee went out to battle the upstart Church with a sword in his hand, and a troop of cavalry and foot soldiers at his command to pursue the Christians who had fled Jerusalem.

The military unit was the gift of Caiphas, high priest of the Jerusalem Temple. In Saul, Caiphas had recognized the perfect instrument to wipe out Christianity: a resolute man, well-educated, seething with zeal. Caiphas had given him a packet of official letters, waxed and imprinted with the seal of the high priest, and addressed to all the synagogues to the north.

Saul meant to scour the land as far north as the great desert. He promised Caiphas he would bring back, bound and captive, every Christian that he found.

But for many days and nights he rode without finding a single follower of Jesus, without excitement of any kind until he was drawing near to Damascus. From his white horse Saul could see the well-tended green gardens lying all around the ancient city and the two rivers whose embrace made this plain a lovely place of rich harvest. Even under the heel of Rome, as Damascus now was, being governed by an ethnarch called Aretas, a local king set up by the Roman Emperor, the people looked happy.

Saul, covered with dust, his throat dry, was anticipating the good dinner and the sweet night's repose he knew he could expect at the principal inn under the roofed bazaar of the "Street That Is Called Straight."

The border of the town was not more than half a mile away when Saul suddenly swayed in his saddle.

Everything he could see and hear and feel all around him underwent a change. There was a chill wind blowing at him, a blinding light shining on him from the heavens, and the roar of great waters in his ears.

Saul clutched at the reins but his palsied hands could not hold them. He pushed with his heels against the stirrups, but his ankles quaked and all power had gone out of his legs. With a great gasp he realized he had no strength to help himself. He fell to the ground and lay there helpless.

Then the roaring sound ceased and he heard a Voice assuring but compassionate:

"Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute Me?"

Groaning, not daring to lift his face from the earth, Saul replied:

"Lord, who are you?"

And the answer came in winning tones:

"I am Jesus, whom you persecute. It is hard for you to kick against the goad."

There could be no answer to that. Saul knew what the words meant, especially in relation to himself. A goad was a long stick about nine feet in length, sharpened at one end for poking at cattle. And the cattle could not kick against it, for the herdsman was nine feet away. Saul felt very much as helpless now. He sensed, dimly, that that same futile rebellion had been at the root of his emotional storms in the weeks since Stephen's death.

Trembling and astonished, Saul faltered the question that spelled his immediate, instantaneous surrender:

"Lord, what will You have me to do?"

The voice of the Lord replied to the man lying face down in the dust:

"Arise and go into the city and there it shall be told you what you must do."

And the Voice seemed to pale away in the wind.

Saul raised his head, drew himself up to a sitting position, and shook himself. His soldiers stood, amazed and troubled, in a great circle. They, too, had heard the Voice; and yet they had seen no man speak except Saul, their captain. They stood in silence that was like a spell. Then two of them took Saul by the armpits and raised him to his feet. But Saul's groping hands, as they made to let go of him, told them a shocking truth.

Saul was blind!

Saul never doubted he had actually seen Jesus. Years later, in the first letter he wrote to the Corinthians, he would rehearse the familiar history of Christ's death, burial, and Resurrection. He would remind the people of Corinth that the risen Christ had appeared to Peter and the rest of the twelve, that He had been seen by more than five hundred disciples at once, many of whom were still alive when that letter was being written. And then he added, with fervent humility and thanksgiving:

"And last of all, He was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time.

"For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God.

"But by the grace of God, I am what I am; and His grace in me hath not been void, but I have laboured more abundantly than all they: yet not I, but the grace of God with me."

Skeptics still scoff at this encounter. Nearly two thousand years away from evidence, with no testimony for their own theories, they dismiss Saul's conversion as an epileptic fit. The line of years from then to now quakes with countless epileptics, not one of whom has written a single letter that affected the world, nor converted peoples, nor captured the imagination of posterity. Only Saul did that; Saul, of whom no fit was reported before Damascus or since. No skeptic can dispute the complete change in life of Saul, or what suffering he endured for it.

In that one blinding, falling moment Saul became another man. The hunter of Christians, the heresy detective became in one instant full of yearning to be a Christian.

He had seen God. And trembling before that glory, stripped naked of his intellectual pretenses, he had cried out in the hope and fear of all believers:

"Lord, what would You have me to do?"

Saul let his soldiers lead him slowly toward the open gate of Damascus. Strangely, he felt no humiliation in being blind, helpless in the hands of underlings.

He was going into the city, as the Lord had commanded him, to wait to be told what next he must do. To him nothing else mattered.

For three days, Saul was a problem in the house of a Christian who bore the unfortunate name of Judas.

The infamous reputation of the betrayer of Jesus had been such that this second Judas, this good man, has not fared well in the memories of the faithful. Yet he deserves to be remembered with hosannas.

His act was of sublime charity. He knew that Saul was the Christians' worst enemy. He also knew that Saul had met with some sudden accident outside the city gate. Judas was not so gullible as to hope that kindness would appease Saul; mercy in the eyes of the anti-Christians was a weakness. Judas had nothing to expect and much to fear when he opened the door of his house, behind the Street That Is Called Straight, and allowed the weakened Saul to be laid in his own bed.

For three days and three nights the soldiers of Saul stood guard over Judas' house while their captain lay in bed.

"Saul talks to himself," they said to one another. "He is a very sick man."

But none of the advice or the weird prescriptions of Damascus doctors were of help. Saul was blind. He ate nothing and he drank nothing. His lips moved, and he whispered softly.

One man in Damascus knew what Saul was trying to say. His name was Ananias and he is not to be confused with the liar of the same name. Here was a new part of Christian history with a new Judas and a new Ananias, accidentally serving as symbols of a better future.

To this second and admirable Ananias the Lord spoke directly, in a vision:

"Ananias!"

And not unlike devout men of the Old Testament, Ananias replied:

"Behold, I am here, Lord!"

And the Voice continued:

"Arise! And go into the Street That Is Called Straight! And seek in the house of Judas, one named Saul of Tarsus!" A name to ignite panic in any Christian heart, Saul of Tarsus!

"For behold—he prays!"

Ananias had been instructed in the mercy and forgiveness of God. He knew that God will forgive trespasses only as we forgive them who trespass against us. But Saul was a living terror, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord."

And even while Ananias was cowering in the presence of such fearful instructions, a kind of vision came at the same time, halfway across the city, to the distracted mind of blinded and helpless Saul. He saw someone entering the bedroom of Judas' house, a stranger who laid pale and trembling hands over Saul's eyes.

At the instant of that vision, Ananias was already pale and trembling.

"Lord," he protested, overwhelmed with his terror, "I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he has done to Your saints in Jerusalem. And right here in Damascus he has authority from the chief priests of the Temple to bind everybody who dares to invoke Your Name."

There was a moment's silence, and then the Lord spoke with a firmness of command not to be mistaken:

"Ananias!"

"Lord?"

"Go your way. For this man is to Me a vessel of election, to carry My Name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him what great things he must suffer for My Name's sake."

There could be no reply except instant obedience.

A minute later, Ananias set off down the narrow and deserted paths of early morning, to look for Saul in the house of Judas.

The sun was not yet up, and the room was dim as the messenger of Christ stood by the bed and spoke to the tossing, blinded man of Tarsus:

"Brother Saul."

The hands of Ananias, pale and trembling, touched the eyelids of the stricken man.
"Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus has sent me."

A sound like a groan came from the lips of Saul, weighted with profound and grateful relief, as if he had waited in anguish for this call.

"The Lord Jesus has sent me," Ananias repeated; "He that appeared to you in the way as you came; that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost."

To see again. Oh, yes, please, merciful Lord! And to be filled with the Holy Ghost! The Holy Ghost that I had sworn to drive from the hearts of men in the name of God and the Sanhedrin.

"And immediately there fell from his eyes, as it were, scales, and he received his sight. And rising up, he was baptized."

Saul baptized! Now, there was a tale the Christians back in Judaea would find it hard to believe. By the grapevine that passed from Damascus to Joppa, from Nazareth and Capernaum even to Jericho, and through Galilee into Samaria and wherever the Christians were hiding in the underground, the word would go out that Saul, the persecutor, had been stricken blind near the western gate of Damascus; had seen the Lord Jesus and heard His Voice, had been healed of his blindness by a Syrian Christian, and that now he was himself a Christian.

Who could be expected to believe a wild story like that?

Yet it was literally true. Barely able to stand in the weakness of joints and waist and thighs that was the aftermath of his fall, Saul nevertheless held himself stubbornly erect and suffered Ananias to pour the water over him in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

Saul could see the room filled with sunrise; the bed, the chairs, the table, and the sweating candle; he could see the face of his new friends, Judas and Ananias.

In that moment Saul became truly, irrevocably, a new man.

And he chose to mark that hour of transformation by shedding the Hebrew name Saul, by which all men knew him. He chose instead to be known by the name he had seldom used, his official name as a Roman citizen.

Instead of Saul, the man of Tarsus would from that day of baptism till the end of time be known as Paul.

SOURCE: EWTN, this retelling by Fulton Oursler (1893-1952) adheres closely to the well-known account in the Book of Acts
GRAPHICS:
Road to Damascus, by Michelangelo Buonarroti 1542
Ananias Restoring the Sight of Paul, by JEAN II RESTOUT 1719 (This 90 x 80 cm oil on canvas can be found @ Musée du Louvre in Paris)

Selection from A Treasury of Catholic Reading ed. John Chapin (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1957).

Provided Courtesy of:
Eternal Word Television Network
5817 Old Leeds Road
Irondale, AL 35210
www.ewtn.com

Quick Profile of St. Paul

From: Saints.SQPN.com

Also known as

Apostle Paul
Apostle to the Gentiles
Paul of Tarsus
Saul of Tarsus

Memorial

25 January (celebration of his conversion)
16 February (Saint Paul Shipwrecked)
29 June (celebration of Saint Peter and Saint Paul as co-founders of the Church)
18 November (feast of the dedication of the Basilicas of Peter and Paul)

Profile

Jewish Talmudic student. Pharisee. Tent-maker by trade. Saul the Jew hated and persecuted Christians as heretical, even assisting at the stoning of Saint Stephen the Martyr. On his way to Damascus, Syria, to arrest another group of faithful, he was knocked to the ground, struck blind by a heavenly light, and given the message that in persecuting Christians, he was persecuting Christ. The experience had a profound spiritual effect on him, causing his conversion to Christianity. He was baptized, changed his name to Paul to reflect his new persona, and began travelling, preaching and teaching. His letters to the churches he help found form a large percentage of the New Testament. Knew and worked with many of the earliest saints and fathers of the Church. Martyr.

A Catholic Notebook

Monday, September 5, 2011

Much About Paul