Saint Paul

“ Paul; and we may thus regard it with yet deeper interest, as a monument unconsciously erected by a pagan to the memory of a martyr. Nor let us think they who lie beneath its shadow are indeed resting (as degenerate Italians fancy) in unconsecrated ground. Rather let us say, that a spot where the disciples of Paul's faith now sleep in Christ, so near the soil once watered by his blood, is doubly hallowed; and that their resting-place is most fitly identified with the last earthly journey, and the dying glance of their own patron saint, the apostle of the Gentiles."—Conybeare and Howson. ”

“ Saint Paul, mentioned by the early martyrologies as bishop of Narbonne, and confessor, has been conjectured to be Sergius Paulus, the proconsul, converted in the island of Cyprus by the apostle Paul, when Elymas, the sorcerer, withstood S. Paul. There is no evidence substantiating this, nor does it appear to rest on any very ancient tradition.
The most ancient martyrologies do not assert it, though some of them say that he was a convert of the Apostle of the Gentiles. The Roman Martyrology mentions the report, but does not authorise it. The Acts of his life are not deserving of credence. ”

“ And when the people of this city saw this, they all believed. Now the saints were tortured by stoning and by being shot at with arrows. [And the apostles] raised many from the dead. And after this Saint Paul departed to another city, and preached the preaching of the Holy Gospel. And our Lord Jesus Christ appeared unto him, and said unto him, “Peace be unto thee, O Paul, My chosen one. ”

“ But from this period we date many of his epistles, on which his fame and influence largely rest as a theologian and man of genius. Among those which he wrote from Rome were the Epistles to the Colossians, the Ephesians, and many pastoral letters like those written to Philemon, Titus, and Timothy. We know but little of the life of Paul after his arrival at Rome, for at this point Saint Luke closes his narrative, and all after this is conjecture and tradition. [4] But the main part of Paul's work was accomplished when he was first sent to Rome as a prisoner to be tried in the imperial courts ”

“ Paul, it is not permitted to man to recount: but the ardor of her heart, the continuity of her prayer, the efficacy of her teaching, proved sufficiently that she had seen heavenly secrets which none can understand without witnessing them.
At the same time, she told her Confessor, who transferred her relation to writing, that St. Paul, the Apostle, had appeared to her and warned her to apply continually to meditation. She obeyed with earnestness. On the vigil of the Feast of St. Dominic, while she was praying in the church she received great revelations concerning St. ”

“ O blessed Saint Thomas! who art now in the land of light and vision, intercede for us that we may be as little children, believing all we are told and quietly waiting till the day dawn and the Orient arises in all His majesty and strength, preparing as a giant to run His course, but for the moment hiding everything under the form of a helpless babe. We do not ask for sight but for the light which will lead us to Him, the light of faith, so that when we see Him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger we may cry out with you: "My Lord and My God." ”

“ Thus was her holy heart drawn up to still greater heights of holiness, and the dark passion-flowers of her sorrows shut themselves up to sleep in the tepid night of blindness. How different are the sufferings of the sinner and those of the saint! The former are an eclipse of the moon, by which the dark night becomes still blacker and wilder; the latter are a solar eclipse, which cools off the hot day, and casts a romantic shade, and wherein the nightingales begin to warble. ”

“ And round about them stood nothing but the temple-bearers, the columns! The temple of all gods endured and concealed the diminutive altars of the later ones.
Gaspard questioned Albano about his impressions. He said he preferred the larger church of Saint Peter. The knight approved, and said that youth, like nations, always more easily found and better appreciated the sublime than the beautiful, and that the spirit of the young man ripened from strong to beautiful, as the body of the same ripens from the beautiful into the strong; however, he himself preferred the Pantheon. ”

“ But blessed art thou, O Paul, that thy generation, and those thou teachest, are the sons of the Kingdom. And know thou, O Paul, that every man who believes through thee hath a great blessing, and a blessing is reserved for him.” Then he departed from me. And the angel who was with me led me forth, and said unto me: “Lo, unto thee is given this mystery and revelation; as thou pleasest, make it known unto the sons of men.” And I, Paul, returned unto myself, and I knew all that I had seen ”

“ The Message which Paul bore to Jew and Gentile was the moving force of all his work. The starting point was the memorable day when Jesus Christ appeared to him on his way to Damascus. Paul believed that he received his commission as an apostle directly from Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:1-24) . The four main positions of Paul, set forth so plainly in his Epistle to the Romans, are: (a) All are guilty before God (Jew and Gentile) . (b) All need a Savior. (c) Christ died for all. (d) We are all (through faith) one body in Christ. Paul leaves us in no doubt as to how he regards Jesus Christ. ”

“ There is one in the world whose name is Paul, he preaches and announces Christ, and we believe that many have entered into the kingdom through the virtue and sweetness of his speeches. Behold all the just men are behind me coming to meet thee, Paul, and I first come for this cause to meet them who did the will of my Son and my Lord Jesus Christ, I first advance to meet them and do not send them away to be as wanderers until they meet in peace. ”

“ And it is in just such a mood that, reading this paragraph of the great Epistle, he will smite upon his breast, and say, "God, be merciful to me the sinner" (Luke xviii. 13) .
{55} So doing he will be meeting the very purpose of the Writer of this passage. St Paul is full of the message of peace, holiness, and the Spirit. He is intent and eager to bring his reader into sight and possession of the fulness of the eternal mercy, revealed and secured in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Sacrifice and Life. But for this very purpose he labours first to expose man to himself ”

“ Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead ”

“ In the second place we may ask of what use could it be to mankind that St. Paul should hear in the third heaven, unspeakable words, that is to say, such as it was unlawful for man to utter? What should we think of a man who should come and assure us, that he possessed a secret most important to our happiness, but yet one which he was not permitted to divulge? Thus the voyage of St. Paul is either a chimera engendered by a sickly brain, or a fable, contrived by a cheat, who sought to make himself respected by boasting of the peculiar favours of the almighty. ”

“ His whole heart, in Christ, is blent in personal love with hearts belonging to many nations; in spiritual affection he is ready for contact with all hearts. And now he, of all the Apostles, is the teacher who by life and word is to bring this glorious catholicity home for ever to all believing souls, our own included. It is St Paul pre-eminently who has taught man, as man, in Christ, to love man; who has made Hebrew, European, Hindoo, Chinese, Caffre, Esquimaux, actually one in the conscious brotherhood of eternal life. ”

“ Paul would have us cultivate is not this cowardly mis-called wisdom, but rather the spirit of the ideal soldier, of the 'happy warrior.' Nothing, {208} in fact, could be more fascinating than the picture St. Paul here draws of the Christian community. He has a vision of a pure brotherly enthusiastic society, fulfilled with a divine life, and attracting into its warm and comfortable fellowship the isolated, weary, hopeless, and sin-stained from the cold dark world outside.
Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil. ”

“ The voice of St Paul is heard again; and he comes full upon the Lord's message of duty, conduct, character.
As out of some cleft in the face of the rocky hills rolls the full pure stream born in their depths, and runs under the sun and sky through green meadows {322} and beside the thirsty homes of men, so here from the inmost mysteries of grace comes the message of all-comprehensive holy duty. The Christian, filled with the knowledge of an eternal love, is told how not to dream, but to serve, with all the mercies of God for his motive. ”

“ Paul literally loves the Church; how he longs to communicate his own enthusiasm to it; how he would die, almost does die, himself to bring life to them. All his hopes are bound up with theirs—his salvation with their salvation. He seems to 'fail from out his blood, and grow incorporate' into them. We are called to the same office as St. Paul, we have the same power working in us as he had working in him: we too shall have success in so far as we love—as we identify ourselves with those whom God has given us to take care of. ”

“ Up to Paul's conversion, the inspired historian of the Acts has given us a condensed statement of the growth of the Church among the Jews. Peter and John are prominent in the work. But the great message is now to issue forth from the confines of Judaism; all flesh is to see the salvation of God; and St. Paul is to be the great instrument in preaching Christ to the Gentiles. In the development of the Christian Church Paul wrought more than all the other Apostles; and therefore in Acts St. Paul stands forth, the prominent agent of God in the conversion of the world. ”

“ We see the marvelous changes wrought in the lives and characters of the converts. We note that the triumphs of faith were won through a belief in the Divine Son of God and the power of the Holy Ghost. The struggles and difficulties of these early Christians in coming out of heathenism are depicted in a masterly way. Paul, in his endeavor to guide aright the churches, of which he had been the spiritual father, shows what he believes and teaches about God, the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ, sin, redemption, and the future state of the soul. ”

“ They are all who, in Rome of old, in England now, "have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," "have the Spirit of God dwelling in them," and are living out this wonderful but most practical life in the straight line of their Father's will.
As if he could not heap the golden words too thickly together, St Paul dictates here with even unusual {337} abruptness and terseness of expression. He leaves syntax very much alone; gives us noun and adjective, and lets them speak for themselves. We will venture to render as nearly verbatim as possible. ”

“ He is glorifying Jesus and urging them to believe in Him. There is not one word about the indignities that have been heaped upon himself. This personal testimony in this city where Paul had been the chief persecutor was wonderful. But as the Jews had demanded the life of Christ, when he was upon earth and testified to His mission, so now they demanded the life of Paul.
Before the Jewish Council (Acts 22:24-23:10) .—Paul, rescued from the clutches of the mob, would have been scourged by the Romans had he not declared himself a Roman. ”

“ Prayer, that great mystery, that blessed fact and power, was indeed vital to St Paul. He is always praying himself; he is always asking other people to pray for him. He "has seen Jesus Christ our Lord" ”

“ While I thus stood stammering, uttering something perchance but meaning nothing, Paulus interrupted me, taking me by the hand and saying, “I perceive that there is to be more discourse between us; wherefore I will only say this, that this night my prayers shall ascend to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in thy behalf. For the Lord hath need of thee, and verily thou shalt be saved and redeemed from all thy sins. To-morrow, as thou hast heard, I stand before the Emperor ”

“ We come to know the Apostle Paul as we know scarcely any other of the world's great minds. We find in him a man of the highest intellectual and spiritual powers, equally great in passion and in action, as a thinker and a leader of men. But at every step of our acquaintance the Apostle points us beyond himself; he says, "It is not I: it is Christ that lives in me." If this Epistle teaches us the greatness of Paul, it teaches us all the more the Divine greatness of Jesus Christ, before whom that kingly intellect and passionate heart bowed in absolute devotion. ”

“ He was the principal figure in the history of the early Christian Church, but was soon eclipsed by the overpowering presence and zeal of Paul. Tradition, indeed, has something to tell of him, but from it little of trustworthy can be gathered except that he finished his career by martyrdom in the city of Rome. This Apostle is represented in Christian art as an old man, bald-headed, with a flowing beard, dressed in a white mantle, and holding a scroll in his hand, his attributes being the keys, and a sword in symbol of his martyrdom. ”

“ Here, then, is the Apostle Paul, with the redemptive purpose interweaving itself with all the entanglements of his common life, a purpose reaching back into the awful depths of the eternities, and issuing from those depths in amazing fulness of grace and glory. No one can be five minutes in the companionship of the Apostle Paul without discovering how wealthy is his sense of the wealthy, redeeming ministry of God. What a wonderful consciousness he has of the sweep and fulness of the divine grace! ”