Pauline Year

Two Thousand Later Paul Is on His Travels Again
From Rome to Jerusalem, from Moscow to Lima, a traveling exhibition to celebrate two thousand years of the birth of the Apostle of the Gentiles, tells of what drove him to announce Christ to the whole world
 
by Giuseppe Frangi

On the cover of the catalogue of this “traveling” exhibition, which the Italian Bishops’ Conference commissioned to remember the two thousandth anniversary of St. Paul’s birth, is the most striking picture of him: a detail of the Conversion on the Road to Damascus, painted by Caravaggio for the Cerasi Chapel in the Roman Church of Santa Maria del Popolo. It was not the first time that Caravaggio had approached this subject. For the same chapel, he had painted another similar subject, a panel still preserved in the Odescalchi collection in Rome. For a long time, it was thought that this panel had been refused by the commissioner, but studies by Luigi Spazzaferro discovered that it was Caravaggio himself who decided to retrieve it.
In the first painting, Paul falls from the horse with his hands before his eyes, while from heaven Jesus appears to him supported by an angel. It is a scene of almost anecdotal realism, which expresses more Paul’s bewilderment than the miracle of the call. In the second version, Caravaggio makes a clean sweep and goes straight to the heart of the event. Paul, fallen from his horse, has a face filled with light, and his arms are opened wide, or rather, outstretched, as in an irresistible embrace. On the back of the same cover appears the detail of Paul’s hand open to accept what in a section of the exhibition is called “God’s unforeseeable initiative.” There is total, decisive joy on the face of this St. Paul painted by Caravaggio. The words of Hans Urs von Balthasar found on page 114 of the catalogue could serve as a caption: “We cannot understand Paul if we don’t let ourselves be convinced that in Damascus he contemplated the supreme beauty, as the prophets did in the visions of their vocations, so as to be able to sell everything for the one pearl.”
This is the catalogue of an exhibition intended not only to celebrate St. Paul, but to re-propose his amazing story to the faithful and people of our day. As Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Guardian of the Holy Places, said, “This grandiose cultural project, with the careful combination of the images with texts of Sacred Scripture, and accompanied by comments of ancient authors and modern biblical scholars, helps us to preserve the earliest memories of the missionary Church.”

A tireless man
The exhibition, which will soon be on display at the Christian Information Center in Jerusalem, is divided into two sections: the first covers St. Paul’s fascinating life, from his origins in Tarsus, “the city of no importance,” where he was born between 7 AD and 10 AD. Son of a Jewish father who had obtained Roman citizenship, the young Paul was a fanatic persecutor of the early Christians. In the year 36, as he himself would confess in the Acts of Apostles (2:10), he had given his approval to the execution of saints, amongst these the deacon Stephen.
Annibale Caracci’s painting, included in the exhibition to recall this martyrdom, is highly emblematic. On one side is Stephen on his knees preparing himself to receive the martyr’s crown, while opposite him is Saul sitting down, inciting the mob to stone the deacon. At his feet you can see the cloaks spoken of in the Acts: “And the witnesses put down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.”
The course of the exhibition proceeds following all the stages in the life of this untiring Apostle. Every stage is accompanied by images of those places, still highly suggestive even today. The three missionary journeys are thus recounted clearly, with punctual efficacy; so, too, his arrival in Rome, his imprisonment in the “privileged” form of house arrest, and his martyrdom at Tre Fontane.
The second part of the exhibition, realized with the collaboration of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo, develops the meaning of Paul for today, the appeal that his figure and his human adventure have for people today. Thanks to the collection of images, paintings and other powerful works (chosen by Sandro Chierici), St. Paul’s driving force emerges, with his being continually stretched out towards what had won him over, his unimaginable freedom: “‘Everything is lawful for me,’ but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is lawful for me,’ but I will not let myself be dominated by anything” (1 Cor 6:12). We can understand how such a character fascinated the imagination of all the great artists, urging them to give the best of themselves.

Moses’ grain
This was the case, as we have seen, with Caravaggio. But what about the anonymous author of the mosaics of Monreale, in Sicily, who, in representing the encounter between Peter and Paul, gave us one of the most stirring images of friendship ever recorded? Then there is Rafael’s impetuous Paul, in a design for the Vatican Tapestries: while preaching in Athens, he lifts his arms to draw the bystanders’ attention and to give more clarity and energy to his words. We can think of the monumental Paul of Velazquez, now an old man, with his face aflame with the same drive and at the same time firm in the faith which alone gives him consistence. We are now far removed from the prototype of Paul’s likeness, that of the long face and the beard, which is taken from the tomb of the young man Asellus, and preserved in the Vatican. For centuries, this prototype was copied, the baldness  increasing when the scene represented the Apostle at a more advanced age. The tradition was also followed that presented Paul as rather emaciated, probably because of a stomach complaint, as he himself affirms in the second letter to the Corinthians (where he speaks of “a spine in the flesh”).
It is in this second section that we discover, amongst other things, one of the most surprising images of the whole exhibition. It is the Romanic capital on a column in the Basilica of Sainte-Madeleine in Vézelay, France, which represents the “mystic mill.” The key to this image is found in the scroll accompanying a statue of St. Paul, on the façade of the Church of Saint-Trophime in Arles. On that scroll is written, “What the law of Moses kept hidden is revealed in the word of Paul: now the grain given on Sinai is ground by him and becomes flour.”

A very poor speaker
We must also mention two other sections in the catalogue. One is the marvelous interview with Marta Sordi (Professor of Greek and Roman History, Catholic University, Milan). It is simple and clear, but at the same time complete as befits the view of an historian. She avoids any overstatement and rhetoric and reconstructs, step by step, the most realistic version of Paul’s life, revising the traditional chronology most convincingly.
Finally, there is a precious collection of Benedict XVI’s addresses dedicated to St. Paul, like that of June 28, 2007, in which the Pope stresses a detail important for understanding the figure of the Apostle. The Pope says that Paul was not a good speaker at all–“on the contrary, he shared with Moses and Jeremiah a lack of oratory skill. ‘His bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account’ (2 Cor 10: 10), his adversaries said of him.” So how can we explain the success of his preaching? The Pope replies, “The extraordinary apostolic results that he was able to achieve cannot, therefore, be attributed to brilliant rhetoric or refined apologetic and missionary strategies. The success of his apostolate depended above all on his personal involvement in proclaiming the Gospel with total dedication to Christ; a dedication that feared neither risk, difficulty, nor persecution.” What counted for Paul was dedication rather than strength.