Bookmark and Share

Saint Paul, the Apostle

Born c AD 8, named Saul, from Tarsus in Cilicia (south-central Turkey); Martyred c AD 67 in Rome
Major shrine - Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, Rome
Feast of the Conversion of Paul - 25 January
(end of the week of Prayer for the Unity of Christians)
Feast of Saint Paul's Shipwreck in Malta - 20 February
Feast of Saints Peter and Paul - 29 June
Feast of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Ss Peter and Paul - 18 November

3 2us on St Paul's Conversion by Fr John Edwards SJ      

"Now what is important about his conversion? Well this, that he is so vital for the Church. It's very mysterious, Our Lord had chosen 12 apostles to whom he gave authority to teach all nations and guaranteed that they would teach the truth. We look on them as the first bishops; 1 of them was Judas, he had to be replaced, but these people had all known Our Lord in his earthly life. He chose out 12, St Mark says, to be with him. But St Paul was not with him. St Paul, a learned man, learned in Jewish religion, highly intelligent .. persecuted the Church and did it zealously for a long time. Now it was this man who met Jesus in a different way."

3 2us on St Paul by Fr Francis Selman      

"When we consider how much of the world has received civilization from Europe and how much European civilization owes to Christianity, which transformed its Greco-Roman inheritance then, after Jesus, perhaps no-one has influenced history more than Saint Paul, who took the new Christian faith around the greater part of the Mediterranean. ... St Paul's whole life and work can be summed up in a single phrase: the desire to know Christ and to make him known. As St Thomas Aquinas comments on the Letters of St Paul, 'It is not enough just to be illumined but also to bring light to others.'
"