St Paul

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
29 Jun 2003

Today is the feast of Peter and Paul, who founded the Christian Church in Rome. Over the centuries Christians have wanted to be sure that they were receiving the genuine teachings of Christ and they looked particularly to the communities founded by the apostles to guarantee the "apostolic tradition". The Church of Rome was the most important of these guarantors.

In different ages Paul has been controversial for different reasons. He has been important in minimising the requirements for non-Jewish converts entering the Church; on the importance of faith even above good works, on the relationship between God's eternal plan for each of us and human free will. Today he is controversial for his strict views on marriage and sexuality, while his views on women are often misinterpreted.

Paul was a Jew, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a native of Tarsus and a Roman citizen. No Roman citizen could be crucified.

He started as a persecutor of the Christians and was present at the death by stoning of the first Christian martyr Stephen. His conversion while travelling to Damascus to arrest Christians "followers of the Way" is famous. He was thrown to the ground by a great light and heard a voice saying "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" He immediately accepted the call.

He spent three years of preparation in Arabia, then began to work as a preacher. Naturally the Christians were initially suspicious of him.

Eventually he was given authority for preaching to non Jews; he was the apostle of the Gentiles and his great missionary journeys took him from Antioch and Jerusalem, to Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Malta, Rome and perhaps even Spain. He had no easy passage; lashed five times; three times beaten with sticks, stoned, three times shipwrecked, imprisoned and finally executed for his faith in Rome.

He was the greatest missionary of the first Christian millennium and only Francis Xavier would rival him in the next thousand years. One writer described him as the most powerful human personality in the history of the Church.

a second century source "The Acts of Paul and Thecla" gives us the best pen-picture that we have. We read that Paul was "a man of small stature, with his eyebrows meeting and a rather large nose, somewhat bald-headed, bandy-legged strongly built, of gracious presence, for sometimes he looked like a man and sometimes he had the face of an angel".

Once, as part of a radio series, a was asked to invite six guests from history for a dinner party and explain my choice. St. Paul was the first on my list.