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BY STEVE LANDREGAN
“As I was traveling along approaching
Damascus around noon, a great light from the
sky suddenly flashed all about me. I fell to the
ground and heard a voice say to me, “Saul,
Saul, why do you persecute me?’ I answered,
‘Who are you, sir?’ He said to me, ‘I am Jesus
the Nazorean whom you are persecuting.’ (Acts
22:6-8).
Thus Luke, who tells us more about Paul
than Paul tells us about himself, relates the
incident that altered the course of Christianity
by converting Saul the persecutor into Paul the
Apostle.
The encounter between Saul and the
glorified Christ is related three times by Luke
(Acts 9:1-9, 22:5-16, 26-10-18) and is referred
to directly once by Paul (Ga. 1:12-17).
Unlike Peter, Saul’s name was not changed to
Paul by any mandate of Jesus. Two names, one
Roman or Greek (Paul) and one Hebrew (Saul)
were common among those Jews scattered
throughout the Ancient Near East by exile,
persecution or commerce.
Such Jews were described as Hellenized,
referring to their adoption of the Greek
language and many of the cultural customs of
the Greco-Roman world.
Paul indeed, was such a Jew. Born in Tarsus,
in what is now southeastern Turkey, he held
Roman citizenship, a privilege acquired only by
family position and wealth. He was of the tribe
of Benjamin, the same tribe as the great
Israelite King whose name he bore. The
orthodoxy of his family is attested to by his
early training in the law as a student of the
greatest rabbi of the time, Gamiliel the Elder
(Acts 22:3).
It is not known when Saul came to
Jerusalem, or whether or not he was there
during the public ministry of Jesus. Scripture is
silent on the point. He is first mentioned in the
Acts of the Apostles (Acts 7:58) as being
present during the martyrdom of Stephen the
Deacon.
As a rabbi Saul apparently saw in the
embryonic Nazorean sect the seeds of a heresy
capable of shattering the Pharisaic teaching of
the Law as the means of salvation. He became a
zealous and feared persecutor of the infant
church. Not content to root out Christ’s
followers in Jerusalem, Saul went to the High
Priest and obtained what amounted to a license
to harass and persecute Nazoreans in Damascus.
Saul’s conversion was complete and
immediate on the road to Damascus. In
Galatians Paul wrote: “But the time came when
he who had set me apart before I was born and
called me by his favor chose to reveal his Son to
me, that I might spread among the Gentiles the
good tidings concerning him. Immediately,
without seeking human advisers or even going
to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles
before me, I went off to Arabia; later I returned
to Damascus (Ga. 1:15-17).
But the Nazoreans were not too quick to
clasp their new brother to their bosom. Even
Ananias to whom the Lord appeared in a vision
and ordered to minister to Paul, argues'with the
Lord pleading that “I have heard from many
sources about this man and all the harm he has
done to your holy people in Jerusalem.” The
Nazoreans’ intelligence system must have been
effective because Ananias then added, “He is
here now with authorization from the chief
priests to arrest any who invoke your name,”
(Acts 9:13-14).
But for Paul there was no turning back. The
rest of his life was based upon his brief
encounter with the Risen Christ. It provided
the basis for his claim to be an Apostle (1 Cor.
9:1) on equal footing with the Twelve who
were witnesses to the resurrection (Acts 1:22).
The only difference he saw in his witness of the
Risen Christ was a chronological one. His alone
was post-Pentecostal (1 Cor. 15:5-10).
Ananias was not the only follower of Christ
suspicious of Paul. After finding himself
unwelcome among Christians and Jews, Paul
returned to Tarsus and live in semi-retirement
until summoned by Barnabas.
The hatred of those Jews who considered
him a renegade would pursue him the rest of his
life and his total acceptance by the Christians
would only come from the Gentile converts.
Paul was not the founder of the Gentile
church, rather he was sought out by Barnabas
(Acts 11:25-26) to serve as a teacher of the
“great number” of believers won over to the
Gospel by that first Gentile community at
Antioch. It was while Paul was serving as
teacher at Antioch that those previously called
Nazoreans or followers of The Way were first
called Christians.
While early sources indicate that Paul was
physically unattractive, nevertheless his great
scholarship, his fiery but persuasive personality
and his compulsion to preach the Gospel (1
Cor. 9:16) destined him for the role of
missionary preacher.
Singled out by the Holy Spirit, Saul and
Barnabas were commissioned missionaries by
the Antioch community about 48 A.D. There
emerged the pattern that was to mark Paul’s
missionary labors the rest of his life. He would
preach first to the Jews in the Synagogue of a
city, and when they rejected the Gospel, as
they often did, Paul and his companions would
turn to the Gentiles.
Following his first journey the dispute arose
over whether a Gentile must first become a Jew
before being baptized. It was decided in Paul’s
favor, but never really died out and is thought
by some scholars to be the “thorn in the flesh”
given to him that he might not become
conceited (2 Cor. 12:7).
Paul and Barnabas had a dispute before the
second missionary journey and Silas became his
companion (Acts 15:36-39). It was on the
second journey that Paul carried the Gospel to
Europe (Acts 16:9ff). This same journey
produced Paul’s most dismal failure. It occured
in Athens (Acts 17:16-34) where his only
attempt to use a philosophical approach to
preach the Gosepl was met by ridicule and
mockery.
But upon the heels of failure came success
and when Paul preached the simple Gospel of
Jesus crucified to the Greeks of Corinth, the
“sin city” of the Greco-Roman world
responded and he founded the most famous
(and troublesome) of all his churches.
Paul’s third journey took him to Ephesus,
the center of worship of the Greek fertility
goddess, Artemis, where the Gospel
encountered the first pagan hostility (Acts
19:23-40). He returned to Corinth to settle
some disputes and then went to Jerusalem
where the imprisonment began that eventually
took him to Rome.
It was his Roman citizenship that enabled
him to appeal his case to the emperor’s tribunal
when it became bogged down in Caesarea (Acts
25:1-12). And it was his Roman citizenship
that earned him the privilege of being beheaded
instead of crucified.
By the time Paul’s martyrdom occured in
Rome in 67-68 AD, the fiery little preacher
whose life had been turned around on a dusty
road near Damascus, had become the chief
instrument by which the obscure Jewish sect of
Nazoreans had become a worldwide religious
movement destined to change the course of
history. A change brought by God through
Paul’s preaching of the Gospel of Jesus
Crucified, “a stumbling block to Jews, and an
absurdity to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23).
ESTHER, herself a Jew, was
persuaded by Mordecai to intercede
with her husband the King to stop a
plan which would termir te all Jews
on a single day, ramer Alfied McBride
writes. Esther, at the second of two
dinner parties pleaded with the
Babylonian king to spare her and her
people as shown in this drawing by Eric
Smith. (NC Photo)
PAGE 5-July 15,1976
“AS I WAS TRAVELING along approaching Damascus ... a
great light flashed ... I fell to the ground and heard a voice
say . . . ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ I answered,
‘Who are you, sir?’ He said to me, ‘I am Jesus . . . whom you are
persecuting.’ ” (Acts 22:6-8). This incident, as depicted in this
painting by Tintoretto, altered the course of Christianity by
converting Paul the persecuter into Paul the Apostle, Steve
Landregan writes. (NC Photo)
f " ' ' >
Paul’s Message For Today’s Christian
* -
BY RUSSELL SHAW
Have you ever met a person who made such
an impact on you that it changed the rest of
your life?
Paul did - and it changed not only his life
but the course of history. The person who had
this profound impact on him was Jesus Christ.
The story of Paul’s encounter with Christ on
the road to Damascus is one of the most
famous in Scripture. The experience radically
changed his life. From militant persecutor of
Christians he became an ardent follower of
Christ.
This is one of the most clearly recorded
incidents in history of an authentic conversion
— a deep and lasting change of mind and heart
by which a person undergoes a radical
reorientation of beliefs and values. From that
point on, Paul never looked back. He had
acquired a new way of seeing reality and the
rest of his life was spent sharing it with others.
KNOW
YOUR
FAITH
(All Articles On This Page
Copyriqhted 1976 by N.C. News Service*
So dedicated and successful was he in this
enterprise that he, perhaps more than any single
person, was responsible for launching the
process — which continues today and will
continue until the end of time — of proclaiming
Christ’s good news to all nations and peoples.
Paul never wrote a formal autobiography but
we get a vivid picture of him from his letters.
Humanly speaking, he must have been a rather
“difficult” man — impetuous, uncompromising,
impatient with apathy, complacence and
backsliding. He was the sort of person who has
little tolerance for human weakness — his own
and others’ — and is not at all shy about saying
so.
Even today his burning rhetoric is capable of
making us uncomfortable. And it is precisely
such discomfort — with weakness, compromise,
any sort of second-best response to Christ —
which he aims to create, for he recognizes that
only when we feel uncomfortable do we make
the effort to move ahead.
Paul spoke often of himself in his letters but
somehow these passages do not seem
egotistical. Rather, as he put it, “it is not
ourselves we preach but Christ Jesus as Lord,
and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”
(2 Cor. 4:5) Underlying his frequent references
to himself and his experiences is a very simple
message: See what God can do, even with poor
human material, to spread the good news of
Christ and foster the building up of His
kingdom!
Because he was such an exceptional
individual, Paul may seem a rather unlikely
model for most of us. If so, however, we are
missing several key points about his life.
One is that we are all called to conversion.
Not necessarily through visions or even a single
dramatic event, perhaps, but by a constant
reordering of priorities and a continual effort to
bring our values more fully into line with those
of Christ.
This is, of course, the slow and continuing
work of lifetime. But if we do work at it, we
can expect that there will come times in our
lives when God will call us to move
dramatically forward in our commitment to
Christ and His teaching. If we respond
positively to the call, this will be our experience
of “conversion.”
Also like Paul, each of us is called not only
to make his or her individual act of allegiance
to Christ, but to work to bring others to the
point at which, responding to God’s grace, they
will do the same. This is what is meant by
evangelization. As the Church is reminding us
today, each of us is called to participate in the
work of evangelizing.
How are we to do this? The details will vary
from individual to individual. What is central
and essential in all cases is that, like Paul, we be
so committed to Jesus Christ as to live the life
of Christ in our own lives.
Of this we can be sure. Each of us is traveling
his or her own road to Damascus. Somewhere
on that journey Christ will confront us as He
did Paul — perhaps in a private crisis, perhaps in
the face and voice of another human being.
And our response (or our failure to respond)
will deeply and permanently alter our lives and
the lives of others.
Our purpose, then, must be to accept Christ
unconditionally. If we do, we will eventually be
able to say with Paul: “I have been crucified
with Christ, and the life I live now is not my
own; Christ is living in me. I still live my human
life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Ga. 2:
19-20)
Esther, The Queen’s Justice
BY FATHER ALFRED MCBRIDE, 0. PRAEM.
No one in modern times can ever forget the
Nazi holocaust of 6 million Jews. That
disgraceful act of genocide is both a horrifying
and humbling monitor for human conscience.
The pity of it is that it was part of a long
history of pogroms against the Jewish people
and the concomitant anti-Semitism which
inspired and abetted such tragedies. The story
of Esther shows how old this moral sickness is
and how much we should always be alert to
avoid any possible recurrence.
The setting of the story is during the Exile.
The Babylonian king is looking for a fresh
addition to the royal harem. Mordecai, a Jew
who has won favor with the king for uncovering
a treasonous plot, quietly put forward his
beautiful adopted niece, Esther as a candidate.
No mention was made of her religion. To his
great joy, she was chosen and was made queen.
At the same time the king appointed a self
important autocrat named Haman as the prime
minister. Haman did not like Jews. He liked
them even less when he was unable to solicit
from Mordecai the kind of groveling submission
he expected from all underlings in the court.
Haman decided that all Jews in the kingdom
should be exterminated on a single day. He
painted for the king a picture of the Jewish
people as a separatist group, disloyal to the
monarch and disdainful of the official religion.
They had no intention of changing and would
remain a clear and present danger to the throne.
Best to get rid of them all. The king agreed and
a day chosen by lots (lottery) was picked.
Terrified by the turn of affairs, Mordecai
went to Esther and told her she must reveal her
religion to the king and prevail with him to stop
the slaughter. After three days of fasting and
prayer, Esther went to the king and, relying
both on her God and her incandescent beauty,
she dared to approach the king and prepare him
to reverse the judgment. Chapter four describes
her approach to the king with all the poetry
and drama the sacred writer can summon.
Without seeming irreverent, it was a real stage
entrance.
Her strategy was to invite the king to a
private dinner party and move him to the point
where he would be ready to grant a most urgent
request. Dinner party number one succeeded.
She now arranged for a second banquet with
Haman as the special guest. Meanwhile Haman,
so offended by Mordecai’s refusal to be
sychophant, ordered gallows to be built and
Mordecai hanged thereon. With the oriental
love of exaggeration the author writes the
gallows were 83 feet high - about that of a six
story building.
Meanwhile Haman arrives for the intimate
dinner with the royal couple. Now Esther
makes her plea that she and her people be
spared from the coming destruction. The king
realizes the horror to which he is commiting
himself. Frantic, he goes to the garden and
paces up and down to get his thoughts straight.
Haman goes to the queen’s couch and plans to
plead with her for mercy. The king returns at
this moment and says, “Will he also violate the
queen while she is with me in my own house?”
(Esther 7,8) The king ordered Haman to be
executed on the very gibbet he had prepared
for Mordecai. And the king revoked the decree
of execution of the Jewish people.
This story gives the origin of the Jewish feast
of Purim. The name comes from the
Babylonian word “Pur” meaning lottery. It
recalls a projected genocide from which the
Jewish people narrowly escaped and retains its
popularity, especially during times when the
Jewish people are experiencing a wave of anti-
Semitism. It was celebrated in ancient times
during the months of February and March.
The rabbinical writings say it began with a
fast. The evening lamps were lit and the people
went to synagogue to pray. The next two days
were ones of festival - even carnival. The story
of Esther was read at the synagogue and the
congregation would interrupt the reading with
rousing curses against Haman and his kind. The
meeting closed with a solemn blessing of
Mordecai and Esther.
The feast usually was accompanied with
exchange of presents and the giving of alms to
the poor. While it retained this religious
overtone, it was really more like a Mardi Gras
with the wearing of masks, parading and
dancing. In fact, so wild could the party
become, the rabbis laid down a law that one
must stop drinking when one could no longer
say “Cursed be Haman!” “Blessed be
Mordecai!” The Esther story is a reminder again
of how close we can come to repeating the
genocidal attempt of Haman - and the need to
purge anti-Semitism from our souls.