Reflections on St. Paul

Number 1 

My understanding of Paul has changed over the years and, with study, I have come to greatly appreciate Paul. Clearly he would not be the kind of person who would be easy to be around. There would be little patience with anyone suffering from even the slightest passing bout with acedia. I suspect the intensity of his personality could be positively withering to encounter. There is good reason he kept on the move and his reasons for moving on were not always related to the need to move to a new area to spread the gospel.

Paul’s great gift to the world beyond the Jewish culture is how he focused on spreading Christianity to Gentiles. Would it be too simplistic to say that anyone us of would be Christian today if his arguments at the Council of Jerusalem had not carried the day? Just today we heard how Paul and Barnabas turned from the non-listening Jewish community to preach to the gentiles who were far more receptive to the Gospel.

My greatest appreciation of Paul is that he was a convert to Christianity. The other disciples knew Jesus personally and traveled with him during the period of his human ministry. Paul presumably did not know Jesus prior to the Crucifixion but he certainly came to know Jesus as a result of his encounter on the road to Damascus.

Paul was a passionate and ardent enemy of the church and suddenly and dramatically became the single greatest force of evangelization in history. I am of English descent and was raised a Methodist in a community that was overwhelmingly Irish and Catholic. I was, therefore, in no particular hurry to convert. Fortunately, I met my Catholic wife who eventually won me over. I don’t mean to say that my Protestant upbringing made me hostile to the Catholic Church nor did I spend much time waging war on the church. I am pretty sure I never threw any rocks at anyone because they were Catholic but I was a very reluctant convert. I was skeptical about many facets of church doctrine until circumstance led to a re-conversion/re-evangelization experience that changed the direction of my life. My point is that Paul is the guiding light for all converts, including me.

Paul teaches us – and me- how to live the message we learn about from the Gospels and what implications that has in how we behave and how we see the world.