Saint Paul

From that fall, his life took a completely new direction: a road that would carry him across seas and over mountains, through stonings, floggings, shipwrecks, prisons, and finally a sword stroke on the outskirts of Rome. But through all those miles, every step bore the same indelible mark: the mark of the day he realized that the one he was so fiercely persecuting was the very one who had bent down to embrace him.

His Jewish name was Saul; Paul was the name he used in the Greek- and Latin-speaking world. He did not change his name right after his conversion, as many people think; the Acts of the Apostles simply introduces him later by both names: “Saul, also known as Paul.”

As a young man, his family sent him to Jerusalem to study at the feet of the great teacher Gamaliel, one of the most brilliant and respected masters of the law of his time. He lived strictly as a Pharisee, keeping the law so meticulously that no one could fault him. At the same time, he learned a trade with his hands: weaving a coarse cloth from goat hair called cilicium, a specialty of his home region of Cilicia, widely used to make tents for the Roman army. Cutting, treating and stitching that thick, stiff cloth to the right standard, then adding cords and rings so the tents could be pitched quickly in the field, was a highly skilled trade that paid fairly well. That very craft, years later, would support him through all his long missionary journeys, so that he would never become a burden to any of the poor communities he passed through.

When the movement of those who believed in Jesus began to spread among the people, Saul saw it as a monstrous threat that had to be torn out by the roots to protect the purity of his ancestors’ law. He was there, approving, at the very moment the crowd stoned the deacon Stephen to death — standing guard over the cloaks of the men throwing the stones. After that he did not stop, but went searching house by house, dragging off men and women alike, without mercy. Later, as an Apostle, Paul never once tried to hide that dark chapter of his life. He brought it up not to torment himself or to boast of a spectacular change, but to show one thing clearly: no one, however bad, is too far gone for the mercy of God.

The Lord sent an ordinary believer in Damascus named Ananias to see him. Ananias knew this man’s reputation and was so frightened that he protested: “Lord, I have heard from many people about this man, about all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem.” But in the end he went. He entered the house, laid his hands on Saul’s blind eyes, and said very gently:

“Brother Saul...”

Saul’s sight returned. He was baptized, ate, and slowly regained his strength. Right after that, when he began preaching in the synagogues of Damascus that Jesus was the Son of God, the very Jews who had been his allies turned and looked for a way to kill him. They watched the city gates day and night, waiting to murder him. The disciples had to put him in a large basket and lower him on ropes through an opening in the city wall near the Bab Kisan gate in the southeast corner (a small chapel still stands there today in memory of that escape), and he slipped away in the dark.

After that, he withdrew into the Arabian desert for a long time, alone with everything that had just happened, before returning to Damascus. Only three years later did he go up to Jerusalem, staying with Peter for just fifteen days and also meeting the Apostle James. So great a calling needed that long, quiet time to put down firm roots.

Some time later, seeing that his life was still in danger, the brothers sent him back to live quietly in his hometown of Tarsus, where he was almost forgotten for years. Only when the community in Antioch grew strong and needed more people to build it up did Barnabas make the long journey to Tarsus himself to bring him back to work with him. For a whole year the two of them taught and built up that community, and it was in Antioch that people first began calling the disciples by a new name: Christians.

There is something worth pondering: during that long time hidden away in Tarsus, Paul must have tasted both the suspicion and the loneliness of someone standing between two worlds: no longer trusted by his old Pharisee companions, yet not fully accepted by the Christian community either. Years in the life of a man who would later preach to the ends of the earth passed in a silence no one recorded. Perhaps that forgotten stretch of time, and not the dazzling moment on the road to Damascus, was where God quietly prepared him for the roads ahead.

His second journey took him all the way to Macedonia, bringing the Gospel to Europe for the first time. In the city of Philippi, he and his companion Silas were savagely beaten, thrown into prison, and had both feet locked in wooden stocks. In the middle of the night in that dark prison, instead of moaning and complaining, the two of them sang hymns aloud. A sudden earthquake burst open every prison door; the jailer woke with a start, thought all the prisoners had escaped, and was about to draw his sword and kill himself for fear of punishment, but Paul called out from the darkness in time to reassure him. That very night, the jailer’s whole household asked to be baptized.

He came to Athens and stood on the famous Areopagus, where philosophers gathered to debate all day long, and cleverly used an altar inscribed “To an Unknown God,” which he had happened to see in the city, to begin his sermon about a God who truly exists. Some mocked him; others asked to hear more.

In Corinth he stayed a year and a half, weaving tents by day to earn his living and teaching tirelessly by night. In Ephesus he wrote letters full of love and also of frank rebuke to the churches of Corinth, Galatia and Rome. At the same time he organized a collection among all the Gentile communities to send famine relief to the poor of the church in Jerusalem.

Not every community he founded was at peace. The community at Corinth made him write letter after long letter, sometimes sternly correcting its factions, sometimes hurting because some even doubted his standing as an Apostle. In one passage he writes almost with a sigh: he had been hungry and thirsty, naked, beaten, adrift at sea, in danger on every side. He says it not to complain, but to show that the power of the Gospel lies not in eloquence or fame, but in weakness held up by God’s grace.

The voyage to Rome ran into a violent storm that raged for fourteen days and nights without stopping. The ship finally broke apart near the shore of Malta, but thanks to his calm words and leadership, all two hundred and seventy-six people on board swam safely to shore, and not one was lost.

In Rome he was kept under house arrest for two years, in a house he rented himself. Though his hands and feet were still in chains, he was allowed to receive anyone who came to see him and never stopped teaching about the Kingdom of God. From that rented room, under the constant watch of Roman guards, he wrote the great letters to the churches of Philippi, Colossae and Ephesus, and a personal letter to Philemon.

In his last letter to his beloved disciple Timothy, there is a passage that stops the reader short. It is not the voice of a distant saint, but the words of a lonely old man in a cold prison, asking his disciple to bring him his cloak to get through the coming winter, and a few books to read to ease his loneliness. Right after that comes the unforgettable sentence, one of the most quoted in the whole New Testament:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now the crown of righteousness is waiting for me.”

The Church celebrates his conversion on January 25 each year, and celebrates his martyrdom together with Saint Peter on June 29.