The Paulin Year

One year ago, during the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in the Basilica of St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls, Benedict XVI announced the indiction of a Pauline Year, to be celebrated from June 28, 2008, to June 29, 2009, on the occasion of the second millennium of the birth of the Apostle of the Gentiles, who contributed in such an extraordinary way to the announcement and spread of Christianity at the beginning of its history. Pope Benedict XVI wants to stress the ecumenical value of the celebration, recalling that Paul “spent himself totally for the unity and concord of all Christians,” but wanted also to affirm that the Church needs today, just as two thousand years ago, “apostles ready to sacrifice themselves… witnesses and martyrs like St. Paul.” Recent excavations promoted by Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, Archpriest of the Basilica, have made it possible for all pilgrims to the Basilica to see the side of the huge marble sarcophagus, preserved for twenty centuries under the papal altar in St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls, that holds the remains of the Apostle. “Co-opted” into the college of Apostles by Jesus Himself, who struck him down on the way to Damascus, after he had been a persecutor of the early Christian community, Paul became the greatest missionary of all time, the one who contributed to bringing the Gospel announcement to the pagan world, bringing about the first fundamental inculturation of the Gospel in history. Over recent decades, there have been more and more books attempting to present Paul as the true “inventor” of Christianity, who transformed Jesus from a “failed Messiah” into an exclusively spiritual Messiah and universal Savior–a tendency very much in vogue, which blends well with an idea of Christianity reduced to pure spiritual sophia, extrapolated from the gratuitous historicity of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. The Pauline Year, which opens at the end of this month, is an occasion to get to the bottom of this question.
Andrea Tornielli

In the Footsteps
of St. Paul
From the Pharisee who hated Christians to the “Apostle of the Gentiles.” As we begin the Jubilee Year that the Pope intends to dedicate to the most important missionary in history, we want to trace his life and his journeys so as to understand what moved his heart

by José Miguel García

St. Paul the Apostle is without a doubt one of the most well known characters in early Christianity, thanks to the accounts in the Acts of Apostles and the letters he himself wrote to the communities he founded in the course of his missionary journeys. In these, the Apostle offers some interesting biographical notes (Gal 1:13-17;1Cor 15:8-9;2Cor 11:22; Rom 11:1; Phil 3:4-6). Thanks to these brief notes, we know that Paul was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, one of the tribes that had remained faithful to the covenant with Yahweh; that he was circumcised on the eighth day, according to the Law of Moses; that his parents were originally from Palestine, and probably spoke Aramaic; and lastly that he belonged to the group of the Pharisees.
His belonging to Pharisaism meant not only strict observance of the Law and constant study of it, but also separation from other Jews, in order to be part of the “true community” of Israel. He belonged, therefore, to a religious elite. In order to join this group, the candidate had to undergo over a year of probation, during which he learned to fulfill all the ritual prescriptions exclusive to the community and had to keep away from any contaminating relationship, since the Pharisees were lay people who concerned themselves with ritual purity in daily life. According to them, living in a pagan country meant losing this holiness or purity. One could be a true Jew only in Israel. In fact, there is no trace in the historical sources of any explicitly pharisaic school outside Palestine in the period of the Second Temple. So, if Paul was educated according to pharisaic principles, it must have been in Palestine, concretely in the city of Jerusalem.
That Paul–though born in Tarsus, in Cilicia–was linked to Palestine and Jerusalem is deducible not only from his belonging to Pharisaism; Luke affirms it in his report of Paul’s speech from the steps of the Antonian Tower to the people gathered on the Temple square: “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city (Jerusalem). At the feet of Gamaliel I was educated strictly in our ancestral law and was zealous for God, just as all of you are today” (Acts 22:3; cf. 23:6). After a deep study of this Lucan affirmation, Willem Cornelius van Unnik concludes that Paul, though born in Tarsus, went to live in the Holy City “before he was able to look out of the door or walk on the street”–in other words, while still an infant. As for his education, he received it all in Jerusalem, and came to be a student of the Pharisee Gamaliel.
Though some modern authors are firm in identifying the roots of Paul’s Christianity in the Greek world, and consider him a Hellenistic Jew of the Diaspora, with no “contamination” from the Palestinian Hebrew tradition, the description the Apostle gives of himself as a member of the Pharisee sect and the information offered by Luke oblige us to locate his growth and formation in Palestine. The Apostle’s name before his conversion to Christianity points in the same direction: Saul. Written sources and archaeological remains indicate that it was a name not common in the Diaspora, but popular in Palestine. Moreover, the existence of Judaic schools in the Diaspora is not certain and the little information we have of such scholastic activity outside the territory of Israel is in the city of Alexandria.

Persecutor of the Church
In the Acts of Apostles, Luke presents Paul for the first time on the occasion of the martyrdom of Stephen. The first facts he notes are his implication in Stephen’s death as a delegate of the Jewish authorities to ensure the legal procedure of the execution (7:58) and his decisive approval of Stephen’s condemnation (8:1). Soon after, he describes him as officially involved in a systematic persecution of Christians (8:3; 9:1-2). Luke then informs us that this persecution was not aimed at the correction or punishment of the errors of this new faith, but at the death penalty (Acts 22:4; 26:10). In his letters, Paul acknowledges that he wanted to destroy the Christian communities completely (Gal 1:13; cf. Gal 1:23; Phil 3:6; 1Cor 15:9). On his own admission, his action caused great damage to the newly born Church.
At the origin of this frontal opposition, which did not stop short of physical violence, were his zeal for the Law and his pharisaical formation but, above all, the scandal of the Cross. Jesus was condemned to die in this frightful way as a consequence of an accusation by the highest Jewish tribunal before Pilate, the Roman Prefect of Judea. But before Jesus’ appearance before the Roman court, the Sanhedrin had judged that He deserved to die for a crime against the Law of Moses: that of blasphemy. This serious sin, which divine law said must be punished by death, is attributed to Jesus in the rabbinic tradition. Here, for example, is a quotation from the Talmud of Babylonia: “On the vigil of the Passover, Jesus the Nazarene was hanged. For forty days a herald went around crying about him, ‘He goes out to be stoned, because he practiced magic, instigated Israel, and led her astray. Whoever knows something in his favor, let him come and plead for him.’ But no one was found to plead for him and he was hanged on the vigil of Passover. Ulla said: ‘Do you believe that he was someone for whom a plea could be expected?’ He was a me?it [someone who leads to idolatry] and the Merciful One has said: You must not have mercy and cover your fault” (bSanh 43a).
As a zealous Pharisee, Paul considered Jesus evil, a transgressor of the Law, since He had proclaimed Himself equal to God, attributing to Himself the forgiveness of sins and claiming to be the true interpreter of the Mosaic Law. Jesus had even claimed that men’s eternal destiny depended on their attitude towards Him, whether acceptance or refusal. And His followers, who admitted this sacrilegious claim, were guilty of the same crime. If they didn’t repent, they were all to be exterminated. “The Jesus presented in the Gospels, notes Mariano Herranz, the only one historically true, does not stand before God along with men, purely and simply like one of them, but He stands between God and men. If they didn’t accept with faith His words and His person, then the zealous protectors of Jewish orthodoxy had to react to this Jesus like the Pharisee Saul reacted towards those who had believed in Him.”
His life as a zealous Pharisee, however, part of which was the fanatical persecution of the Church, changed radically thanks to God’s decision. On the road to Damascus, God revealed to him that mystery of His Son and called him to become a missionary among the Gentiles. He whom Paul believed cursed by God, he now saw lifted up at the right hand of God, in divine glory. Jesus manifests Himself as the true Son of God and redeemer of all men. And He whom Paul had hated out of religious zeal becomes the affective center of his whole existence.

Paul the Missionary
The three missionary journeys that Paul made 45-57 AD (see p. 41) are well known. In the first journey, accompanied by Barnabas, he set off from the Port of Seleucia heading for Cyprus; he traveled over the whole island, preaching in the Jewish synagogues. Then he set off again, this time for Anatolia, present-day Turkey. He visited the main towns of the region of Pamphylia, Pisidia and Laoconia. He then went back on his tracks to the Port of Attalia, from where he traveled to Antioch in Syria, his point of departure. Experts calculate that on this journey, Paul traveled more than 600 miles, for the most part probably on foot.
His second journey, too, began at Antioch in Syria. Paul decided to go northward by land so as to reach the imperial highway and visit the communities founded during the first journey. After a while, he reached the western coast of Turkey, at the Port of Troas. He decided to go to Philippi, a city in the province of Macedonia. He traveled the road that leads towards southern Greece and reached Athens and Corinth, where he stopped for a year and a half. He went back to Palestine by sea, stopping off at Ephesus; he disembarked at Caesarea, from where he returned to Antioch on foot, thus concluding his second missionary journey. He had traveled about 900 miles.
The third journey followed the same route as the second. Paul set off on foot along the imperial highway, that passes through Anatolia and then Phrygia and Galatia, visiting the communities founded during his previous journeys. Then he reached Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province of Asia, where he stayed for two years. Then, following the coast of the Aegean Sea, he went to Macedonia and Achaia, where he stopped for three months. In this period, because of the collection for the needy Christians in Jerusalem, he went again to Philippi and Corinth. Informed of the machinations the Jews were preparing against him, he decided to change his plan and did not go straight back to Syria. From Philippi, he embarked for Troas, where he stayed one week. He returned by sea to Caesarea and from there went to Jerusalem, where the Christian community welcomed him joyfully. This time he had traveled more than 1,000 miles.
It is easy to imagine that these journeys were made in tough, dangerous circumstances. St. Paul himself says so in his Second Letter to the Corinthians: “Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I passed a night and a day on the deep; on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own race, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights, through hunger and thirst, through frequent fastings, through cold and exposure. And apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches” (11:25-28).
Thanks again to his own testimony, we know that he chose the synagogues of the main towns for his preaching. His choice of the important political and commercial centers facilitated the spread of Christianity in the surrounding regions, which had many reasons for keeping in contact with those towns. Moreover, the Christian communities he had founded show from the start to be truly missionary. Suffice it to recall that the Churches of Colossi, Laodicea and Hierapolis were founded, while the Apostle was still alive, by members of the Pauline communities. “To believe in the Gospel,” writes Herranz, “means to spread the Gospel. It seems that the Apostle took this for granted, as quite a natural fact, which in every convert to faith in Jesus Christ is born contextually, as had happened to him on the way to Damascus, believer and Apostle.”
Certainly one of the characteristics that aroused people’s interest in Christianity was fraternity. People of every level of society, race or culture loved each other and helped each other. There was a sense of effective charity amongst the Christians, so much so that from the start a systematic assistance was organized for the marginalized and the neediest, like orphans and widows, as well as pilgrims and travelers. One example is offered by the help promised to the Christians in Judea by the communities in Asia (Gal 2:10; 1Cor16:1-2; 2Cor 8-9).
Thus, mutual charity witnesses to the unity lived by the Christians generated by Baptism. In Galatians 3:27-28, Paul speaks of this unity using the categories that were in use at the time for distinguishing people: “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” To a society that systematically promoted division, Paul announced the great novelty introduced by Christ into human life: He makes men all one single being. Thus, He puts an end to the estrangement and separation that the Jews felt towards the pagans, He does away with the scorn the free Roman citizen felt for slaves, and cancels the discrimination men imposed on women. This experience of new humanity, determined by charity and compassion, which corresponds to the deepest desires of the heart, was very appealing to the simplest of people.

The last journey
Paul was taken to Rome as a prisoner; this journey is narrated in the last two chapters of Acts (27-28). Luke describes it vividly and in detail, since he was amongst those who accompanied the Apostle. They sailed in the last months of the year 60 AD. Their ship sailed from Caesarea to the Port of Sidon, where it docked; they then sailed from there around the coast of Cyprus, Cilicia and Pamphylia, and from there to Myra in Lycia, where they changed ship. They sailed slowly from the coast of Cnidus to the island of Crete, where they docked in a place called Fair Havens. Winter was near and sailing was dangerous, so they decided to look for a port where they could pass the winter; they chose another Cretan port, called Phoenix. All the same, a violent storm drove them out to sea. For two weeks, they were swept away by the seas, then the storm took them to the island of Malta. The local population welcomed them with great kindness and they spent three months there. At the beginning of spring in 61 AD, they sailed again and reached Syracuse, where they stayed for three days. They then passed through Rhegium and reached Puteoli, where they were welcomed by some brothers who begged them to stay with them for a week. From there they left for Rome, via the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns. In the capital of the Empire, Paul was allowed to rent a house, where he lived for three years under house arrest, but was allowed to receive all those who went to see him and to announce the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Most probably, he was freed in 63 AD and was able to make further journeys. An ancient tradition says that he was able to fulfill his great ambition of visiting Spain (cf. Rom 15:28).

Outside the Walls
After a second period of imprisonment, Paul was beheaded on the via Laurentina, in a place called Aquas Salvias, in 67 AD. His tomb is in the Basilica of St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls. At first, the Christians built a small sepulchral monument, referred to by Gaius. As he had done for St. Peter, Constantine ordered the building of a somewhat smaller basilica there at the beginning of the 4th century, but at the end of the century, the Emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius and Arcadius extended it and changed its original position. When the Basilica was restored after a fire on July 26, 1823, a cemetery was discovered beneath the Basilica, dating from between the 1st and 4th centuries. So the veneration of that place was in existence very soon after the events the monument commemorates.