Peter and Paul

are illustrious Martyrs, leaders of Martyrs, princes of the Apostles, two great luminaries placed by God in his Church, like two shining eyes.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

May the Pauline Year, which ends today, continue in your mind and heart!

Paul did not recklessly run into dangers,

or relapse into timidity and flee. Life was very dear to him because of the opportunities for good which it afforded him.

St. John Chrysostom

St. Paul lived the whole Christ:

he plumbed the profound mysteries of his doctrine, of his heart, of his holiness, of his humanity and divinity.

Bl. James Alberione

[Paul] labored to make his thought clear...

twisting and reshaping a phrase as if it were iron melting in a flame, so that he, the artisan, seems to sweat over his exertions.... He gathers his thoughts and he strikes, so that they seem to spring like sparks from every side of the anvil.

Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

He teaches the equality

of Jew and Greek, of Greek and Barbarian and Scythian. This was the surest way to solicit the insults of Jew and Greek, Barbarian and Scythian together.

Giuseppe Ricciotti

Both disciples [Peter and Paul]

seemed to radiate something divine from their persons. They were so filled with grace and the Holy Spirit that the faithful who merely glanced at them felt a certain mysterious movement to do good, which led them to conform their way of life to the faith they professed....

Nicephorus

The splendor of the Risen One

left him blind; presenting also externally what the interior reality was, his blindness in regard to the truth, to the light, which is Christ.

Pope Benedict XVI

You will find Paul saying

and doing many other things which seem high-handed, yet it is especially these that show his moderation.

St. John Chrysostom

Dying, Paul consecrated his soul to heaven,

his glory to eternity, his faithful to the Church, his body and blood along with the Christian faith, to Rome.

Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

By his own example

and gthe example of Christ, Paul earnestly recommended the Christians to tolerate, bear and relieve one another's burdens as well as their own.

Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

Now he exhorted by letter,

at other times by his presence; now by means of discourses, at other times by deeds.

St. John Chrysostom

If we seek virtue,

there is nothing to prevent us from becoming like Paul.

St. John Chrysostom

St. Paul has a heart that is rarely found,

the heart of a father and a mother in one: of a mother who loves immensely, and of a father who upholds and strengthens.

Bl. James Alberione

Paul and the other New Testament writers

initiate a new literature which is not preoccupied with style but with souls; or better still, with the one and only person who counts--Jesus Christ.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

The Christ, Who conquered him,

will parade him on the highways of the world, as His captive and His slave. As for Saul, he will find the hours of his life always too few to attest adequately his love for the One who had loved him enough to strike him to the heart.

Henri Daniel-Rops

[Paul] placed himself

in an attitude of complete service... This remains the
mission of all the apostles of Christ in all times: to be fellow workers of true
joy.

Pope Benedict XVI

It was not simply a conversion,

a maturing of [Paul's] "I," rather, it was death and resurrection for himself: a life of his died and a new one was born with the Risen Christ.

Pope Benedict XVI

The blessed Paul,

manifesting the power of human zeal to enable us to fly to Heaven without the help of anels, archangels and the other heavenly powers...bids us imitate Christ through his example.

St. John Chrysostom

St. Paul was a man of great variety

and multiplicity in speech and actions, not in the sense that he often changed his mind or personality, but in that, remaaining always the same, he knew how to adapt the truth to varying circumstances.


St. John Chrysostom

Even though he had knowledge

by revelation from God, Paul would put aside eery other occupation to apply himself to the reading and studying of Sacred Scripture.


Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

St. Paul gave himself

to the Gospel with all this life; we can say 24 hours out of 24! And he carried out his ministry with fidelity and joy.

Pope Benedict XVI

God is not a respecter of persons.

He made Paul, and He made you. He is your Lord as much as Paul's, and as He proclaimed Paul he wishes to crown you.


St. John Chrysostom

In praising Paul,

I praise the apostolate; even more, I praise God, the Author of Paul and of the apostolate."


Cornelius a Lapide, SJ
(paraphrasing Gregory Nanzianzen's words on Athanasius)
The Personality of St. Paul

Paul wishes to be only an exemplar for Christ.

If he asks his own disciples that they, too, become imitators of him, Paul, it is because he has become an imitator of Christ.... a reproduction of Christ Himself.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

[Paul] has been given a vision of faith

which reaches beyond the purely pragmatic and the habitual, routine facts. It is a truly supernatural gift, the power of the Spirit which was always strong within him.


Carlo Cardinal Martini
The Testimony of St. Paul

You have seen a man, then,

traversing the entire earth.... As if the entire population of the world were his children he was always in a hurry, always on the move, always anxious to lead all to the Kingdom of Heaven.

St. John Chrysostom

God in his mercy deprived him of sight

because of his previous shortsightedness, in order to improve his subsequent vision.

St. John Chrysostom

Paul, most humble himself

and in all that concerned him, was likewise most noble and sublime in all that concerned Christ and the glory of God.


Cornelius a Lapide, SJ
The Personality of St. Paul

Paul lives the life of Christ crucified;

in Christ he dies, yearning to be dissolved and to be with Him.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

I give you as a model

the charity of Paul which he showed to his new converts...

St. John Bosco

Paul was small

of body and short. He was a bit bent or bowed down. Hos face was splendid and made him look older than he really was...

Nicephorus

St. Paul was not transformed

by a thought but by an event, by the irresistible presence of the Risen One, whom he could never again doubt, so strong had been the evidence of the event, of that encounter.

Pope Benedict XVI

Let us pray

that the Lord, who made Paul see his light and hear his word and touched his heart profoundly, make us also see his light...

Pope Benedict XVI

Paul was the nobles of men

and the most outstanding example of the nobility of human nature and of its possibilities for virtue.

St. John Chrysostom

[Paul's] long martyrdom

consisted of never-ending dangers, tribulations, and persecutions, which he himself enumerated.

Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

As though he were the father

of the whole world, [Paul] struggled unceasingly to steer all into the kingdom of God.

St. John Chrysostom

Since, then, charity is the beginning and the end,

and the sum of blessings, let us imitate Paul in this respect. For charity was the secret of his sanctity.


St. John Chrysostom

To the one who loves St. Paul,

he does not appear as a stern wielder of the sword, but as the most ardent and tender person ever to love Christ.

Bl. James Alberione

The heart of Paul

is the heart of Christ; the word of Paul is the word Christ speaks through him.... He carries Christ to others, and gives himself wholly to the life of Christ.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

At other times

he showed a real feeling for them that was not only paternal but also maternal, such as when he turned to those he was addressing, calling them: "My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you" (Gal 4: 19).

Pope Benedict XVI

After his encounter

with the Risen Christ... Paul could not continue to live as he did before. Now he felt invested by the Lord with the charge to proclaim his Gospel as an apostle.

Pope Benedict XVI

We must not think

that Paul locked himself blindly in an event. In reality, the opposite occurred, because the risen Christ is the light of truth, the light of God himself. This enlarged his heart, and opened it to all.

Pope Benedict XVI

Captivated by [Paul's] words,

those who warred on him quickly became fuel to this fire of the Holy Spirit, so that through them the word spread further and reached others.

St. John Chrysostom

[Paul was]

the rhetorician of Christ, the fisherman of the world who, by means of fourteen letters, real spiritual nets, draws the world to salvation.


St. John Chrysostom

Having been taken up to heaven,

[Paul] seemed an angel from above, sent by God to recall people to heaven.


Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

The apostle also shares

in the destiny of appearing as 'a stumbling block' and 'foolishness,' and Paul knows it; this is the experience of his life.

Pope Benedict XVI

Just acquire Paul's charity

and you will acquire the crown of perfection.

St. John Chrysostom

He is humble

and he can be sarcastic; he is tender and also terrible. When in anguish, he recommends joyfulness. He passes from the dizzy heights of mysticism to scorching invectives...

Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

All that Paul does,

all that he teaches, he does as anotehr Christ. He is engaged in an intense drama with Christ for the center.

Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

We never find in Paul

any merely destructive criticism. There is reproof, never bitter resignation. His apostolic transfiguration, by God's gift, enables him always to see the good things first.


Carlo Cardinal Martini
The Testimony of St. Paul

Such was his longing for Christ

that he wanted to defer his reward and remain amid the struggle; those were his priorities.

St. John Chrysostom
Homily 2 in Praise of St. Paul

As if he were the common father of the whole world,

[Paul] emulated the love of earthly fathers, or rather, he surpassed them in ... love and concern and expended his money, his words, his body and soul, his all, for those he loved.



St. John Chrysostom

Whoever comes close to Paul

is transformed, bit by bit, and learns to live as he did, and to pray as he did.

Bl. James Alberione

Paul had no fear of suffering.

Since he must reproduce Christ in himself, it was not surprising that he should repeat Christ's sufferings.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

By the same grace of God,

and at the same time, Paul was called by Him to the grace of the faith and to the apostolate.

Cornelius A' Lapide, SJ

There has probably seldom been

anyone at the same time hated with such a fiery hatred and loved with such strong passion as Paul.

Adolf Deissmann

The Risen One spoke with Paul,

called him to the apostolate, made him a true apostle, a witness of the resurrection, with the specific charge to proclaim the Gospel to the pagans, to the Greco-Roman world.

Pope Benedict XVI

[In Paul] we see a determination

that is explained only by a soul truly fascinated by the light of the Gospel, enamored of Christ, a soul sustained by a profound conviction.

Pope Benedict XVI

[Paul's] one and only object

was the salvation of those that heard and saw him.

St. John Chrysostom

Keep before you, also,

the example of St. Paul working so hard and suffering so much in the exercise of his mission. In the face of everything, he remained tireless, up to the time when he declared: ‘I have finished my course.’

Bl. James Alberione

No one ever wept

with as much feeling over his own misfortunes as Paul wept for the woes of others.

St. John Chrysostom

In his greatness

he was more ardent than any flame of fire in the crown of all virtues, namely, charity. Just as iron thrust into fire becomes all fiery, so Paul was consumed with charity and became charity incarnate.

St. John Chrysostom

Paul took delight

only in that which was above all else: the love of Christ.


St. John Chrysostom
Homily 2 In Praise of St. Paul

He would rather be in chains,

on a ship adrift at the mercy of the waves, in a city obsessed by pride and dissolute by evil living, than not to be an Apostle.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

The pilot is proven

in the storm, the soldier in battle. The deep-rooted tree is never displaced even t hough the winds may buffet it. So, too, the Apostle Paul...spoke of not being downhearted but rather of being made better by adversities...

St. Cyprian of Carthage

Paul also feels that he is

a true apostle and it seems clear, therefore, that the Pauline concept of apostolate is not restricted to the group of Twelve.

Pope Benedict XVI

Having opened himself to Christ

with all his heart, he became able to engage in a wider dialogue with all, he made himself everything to all. Hence he could really be the apostle to the pagans.

Pope Benedict XVI

Just as a fire grows as it catches

on to different materials and gains increases from what it comes in contact with, so the words of Paul converted to himself everybody that encountered them..

St. John Chrysostom

Paul made every member of the faithful

an apostle, so that all endeavored to increase Christ's glory, to spread the faith and lead parents, children, relatives...to embrace it.

Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

Paul attained

higher perfection every day. He longed for greater hardships, greater struggles, greater dangers, and greater sufferings for Christ, in the same way that fire in a forest spreads until the entire forest is ablaze.

St. John Chrysostom

No one like Paul,

has demonstrated how the proclamation of the cross of Christ appears as 'a stumbling block' and 'foolishness,' to which many react with incomprehension and rejection.

Pope Benedict XVI

Paul shows the way that leads there,

Peter unlocks the door of Heaven.
They stand against the enemy as two armed fortresses;
Towers of faith, whom the city, head of the world, contains.


Venantius Fortunatus

Paul scorned honors, riches, glory

and all earthly goods.... [for] his mind was accustomed to dwell constantly upon heaven.


Cornelius a Lapide, SJ
The Personality of St. Paul

The Apostle, since he concurs with God

for the building up of the Mystical Body of Christ, regards his work as similar to the maternity of Mary who gave life to Christ.

Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

At the root of everything

lies the fact that he [Paul] is inseparable from Christ.



Carlo Cardinal Martini
The Testimony of St. Paul

Why do you wonder if Paul,

when he calls some to himself, does not think it beneath his consideration to be concerned for their temporal welfare and makes reference to this in an epistle?

St. John Chrysostom

There was much in St. paul's character

which was not changed on his conversion, but merely directed to other and higher objects, and purified; it was his creed that was changed, and his soul by regeneration...

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Addressing this society which bore within it

an undeniable religious anguish, Paul declared that what it was suffering from was a great absence, an absence which could be remedied by only one being, one truth, one presence.

Henri Daniel-Rops

St. Paul: Apostle of Nations
Fides Publishers, 1953

He fights and weeps

and writes and travels, bears chains and make tents, all in order to present to God on the day of Judgement an Apostolate complete, unspoiled and unwasted.

Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

The roots of Paul's life,

secret and public, reach deeply into his charisms and mystical experiences; without these, it is unexplainable.

Giuseppe Ricciotti

Saint Paul was steadfast

in his many difficulties and persecutions, sustained above all by the unfailing love of Christ (cf. Rom 8:35-39). May the example of his apostolic zeal inspire and
encourage us today!

Pope Benedict XVI

[In the Damascus encounter,]

Paul learned that, despite the immediateness of his relationship with the Risen One, he must enter the communion of the Church, be baptized, and live in harmony with the other apostles.

Pope Benedict XVI

Today at Paul's entry

not into the city but into the world, let us all turn out to watch. For he carries the standard of no mere earthly king, but the cross of Chrsit, Lord of heaven.

St. John Chrysostom

Because Christ had made Paul

his own (cf. Phil 3:12), could not help but preach the Good News he had received (cf. 1 Cor 9:16). So it is with us.

Pope Benedict XVI

What must have been

the sentiments of [Paul's] soul during those last moments of his life? Who can imagine his ardent protests of love, his prayers, his burning desire for God and Christ...?

Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

Would that I might see

the dust of [Paul's] heart. If one should call it the heart of the whole world, he would not err. This heart was all-embracing: entire cities, peoples and nations were gathered within it.

St. John Chrysostom

His, indeed, was a "wonderful conversion,"

as our Church in one place calls it, because it was so unexpected, and (as far as the appearance went) so sudden. Who of the suffering Christians, against whom he was raging so furiously, could have conceived that their enemy was to be the great preacher and champion of the despised Cross?

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Paul links all

the great creative acts of God in the Old Testament with what has happened to him.

Carlo-Maria Cardinal Martini
The Testimony of St. Paul

Paul, giving the whole of himself,

gives the whole of the Gospel; his mouth is open wide to declare it, his heart is filled and enlarged with Christ's presence.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

Even after so many centuries,

Paul's letters convey a personality that is overwhelming.

Scott Hahn

In the same way that fire

applying itself to different materials is reinforced even more ... so Paul's word won to his cause all those with whom he related, and those who made war on him, captivated by his speeches, became fuel for this spiritual fire.

St. John Chrysostom

In his own letters,

Paul describes his experience not so much in terms of a conversion, but as a call to apostleship and a commission to preach the Gospel.

Pope Benedict XVI

The Apostle Paul

is a paradigm of the first order, from whom all of us today have much to learn.

Pope Benedict XVI

Paul was not terrified or injured

by multitudes of...enemies or by threats or persecution. All these things served to drive him on; they were like high winds continually whipping up the flame of charity in his heart....

Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

Paul's greeting alone

was enough to fill with grace the one who received it.

St. John Chrysostom

A typical element

of the true apostle, brought well into the light by St. Paul, is a sort of identification between the Gospel and the evangelizer, both destined to the same goal.

Pope Benedict XVI

When we read and dwell on St. Paul's history,

we may discern and insist upon the suitableness of his character, before his conversion, for that display of free grace which was made in him.

John Henry Cardinal Newman

To show His power, [God]

put forth His hand into the very midst of the persecutors of His Son, and seized upon the most strenuous among them.


John Henry Cardinal Newman

Paul is a voice

that speaks only for the Gospel; his person is a means for Evangelization. Having given himself to Christ, he sees only the glory of Christ.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

Paul understood that the essential thing for him

is Christ: all the things he does, whatever he performs, however enthusiastically he preaches, all is Christ living within him.



Carlo Cardinal Martini
The Testimony of St. Paul

Before death, Paul experiences in himself

fear and joy, a hope founded on the Spirit and the temptation to discouragement, and he seeks to show through a variety of images that extraordinary horizon of the resurrection of Christ that illumines our whole pathway, our trials, our expectations, and everything we live through.

Carlo Cardinal Martini, SJ

Considering these high and extraordinary favours

vouchsafed to the Apostle, we should naturally suppose that some great objects in the history of the Church were contemplated by means of them, such as in the event were fulfilled.

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Paul can be put to death

but never conquered.


Pope St. Gregory the Great

He gave up everything

--career, interests, affections--and allowed himself to be filled and molded by grace. In him, two forces were always acting: God, who made the approach to him, and Paul, who went in return to meet God.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

St. Paul was the true "Man of God,"

A man filled to an exceptional degree with grace, a man to whom the things of God were particularly entrusted, a man especially obligated to God, a man who could say "His grace in me has not been fruitless."

Blessed James Alberione

Paul nevertheless claims

the title [Apostle] as his own because he was chosen and transformed by the grace of God, and shared the three principal characteristics of the true apostle.

Pope Benedict XVI

Paul never interprets this moment

as an event of conversion. Why? ....This change of his life, this transformation of his whole being was not the result of a psychological process, of a maturation or intellectual and moral evolution, but it came from...the encounter with Jesus Christ.

Pope Benedict XVI

Only one thing he considered shameful:

to overlook anything that contributed to salvation. Therefore he left no stone unmoved, he shrunk from no expenditure for those to be saved: words, deeds, his very life.

St. John Chrysostom

Paul gained more glory

by his boasting than another would gain for keeping silent about his good deeds, for no one gained as much by silence as Paul did by boasting.

St. John Chrysostom

Paul was the leader

and the standard-bearer of martyrdom.

Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

Paul's heart was so expansive,

so great, and so wide open to everyone that the whole world appeared small to him.


Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

St. Paul was thus carried on by the providence of God,

and brought into the light by a miracle; that we may learn, by a memorable instance of His grace, what He ever does, though He does not in ordinary cases thus declare it openly to the world.

John Henry Cardinal Newman

To enjoy Christ's love

completely was life itself for Paul; it was the whole world, the Angels, all things present and things t come, the kingdom and the promise, since Christ's love represented for him untold blessings.


St. John Chrysostom
Homily 2 In Praise of St. Paul

He had a miserable physique

but it was inhabited by an imperial soul.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

Paul the apostle of Christ

sought to conform his thinking and behavior according to the example of Christ. Indeed, this will become his major defense to those who dismiss his ministry as inferior and weak.

Paul Barnett
Paul, Missionary of Jesus

This is the certainty,

the profound joy that guides the Apostle Paul in all these affairs: Nothing can separate us from the love of God. And this love is the true wealth of human life.

Pope Benedict XVI

Paul met not only

the historical Jesus of the past, but the living Christ who revealed himself as the one Saviour and Lord.

Pope Benedict XVI

This is the objective

of the Pauline Year: to learn the faith from him, to learn from him who Christ is, to learn, in the end, the path for an upright life.

Pope Benedict XVI

Paul was a man of fire

...and just as a spark that is cast into hay or aird woodland at once bursts into flame and spreads rapidly, so also Paul blazed continuously with ever new and greater fires of love.

Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

Paul's way of speaking

was remarkably affable and gracious and his manner of conversing drew people to him.


Cornelius a Lapide, SJ

Paul describes himself

as 'Apostle of Jesus Christ,' namely, his delegate, placed totally at his service, so much so as to call himself 'a slave of Jesus Christ.'

Pope Benedict XVI

My prayer is Paul's,

my apostolate is Paul's, so that they may be Christ's prayer and apostolate.

Blessed James Alberione

Strange indeed it was,

and what would have been St. Stephen's thoughts could he have known it! ... The first Martyr had such power with God to raise up the greatest Apostle.


John Henry Cardinal Newman

This man, small of stature and infirm in health,

has a powerful strength, the greatest that any man can have because it is the strength of God.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

[In Antioch], Barnabas is the first

of the prophets, Paul the latest arrival, but Barnabas sees his true worth and introduces him to a work which is to become the most fruitful in the whole early Church.


Carlo Cardinal Martini
The Testimony of St. Paul

The Apostle instinctively experiences his sufferings

not as a solitary personal fate, but as Christ's sufferings in him, because they occur within the ministry that the Lord Jesus has entrusted to him.... he calls them Christ's sufferings in himself.

Carlo-Maria Cardinal Martini

This one conversion [of St. Paul]

marvelously puts before us both the great extent of mercy and the effectiveness of grace.

Bernard of Clairvaux

We see that the Doctor of the Gentiles

...was a true athlete of Christ, instructed by him, anointed and made holy by him, transfixed on the cross with him, glorious in him in the broad arena of this world, in which he became a public wonder both to the angels and to mankind...

Augustine of Hippo

And if such a secret were offered to you

by a mortal on this earth,
I would not want you to marvel at it:
the one who saw it here above revealed this
(and much more, besides, of the truth of these circles)...

Dante
Paradiso 28: 136-139

For Paul apostleship was no empty 'office'.

He sought to replicate Christ as he represented Christ, for example, in 'meekness and gentleness.'

Paul Barnett
Paul, Missionary of Jesus

The only thing St. Paul really wanted

was always to please God. The most important thing of all to him... was that he knew himself to be loved by Christ. Enjoying this love, he considered himself happier than anyone else.

St. John Chrysostom

The one who studies St. Paul

finds the Disciple who knows the Divine Master in his entirety.

Bl. James Alberione

Today we commemorate

not the history of St. Paul, nor his Martyrdom, but his wonderful Conversion. Every season of his life is full of wonders, and admits of a separate commemoration, which indeed we do make, whenever we read the Acts of the Apostles or his Epistles.


John Henry Cardinal Newman

Even though a prisoner,

Paul stood undaunted before the governor and judge...and preached about that Christ for Whom he was in chains.



Cornelius a Lapide, SJ
The Personality of St. Paul

He was flexible enough

in all that was unessential such as food, the Nazarite vow, and circumcision, but he was most uncompromising for truth.... He repudiated all legal formalism and rationalistic paganism.

Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

St. Paul was the singer,

the proclaim our of the glory of God, the promoter of the worship of God, the one set apart by God, the prisoner for Christ who lived in Christ.

Blessed James Alberione

"God's power rests on my weakness."

In this affirmation Paul formulates the great law of the apostolate: the absolute primacy of God over the human instrument.

Renato Perino

It is not sufficient to observe

that Paul is concerned for the community as distinct from the individual, whether that community be described as the Church, Israel, or the entirety of humankind. Paul's theological horizon is nothing less than the cosmos itself which is in need of deliverance ...

Beverly Roberts Gaventa
Our Mother St. Paul

The Pauline year

constitutes a further incentive to deepen the knowledge of St. Paul and assimilate his apostolic ardor.

Rev. S. Sassi
Superior General of the Society of St. Paul
(letter to Benedict XVI)

One does not have the impression

that the pre-Damascus Paul was a man of played a conscience. Paradoxically, Paul becomes fully aware that he was ' in Adam' (a sinner subject to death) only when he became a man 'in Christ"

Paul Barnett
Paul, Missionary of Jesus

When one says "the Apostle,"

it is understood as referring to St. Paul, so high above the ordinary is he exalted.

Blessed James Alberione

If we desire to look in depth

at the mystery of mission understood as a mediating and sacramental action through which the Lord saves the person through the human instrument of the apostle, we cannot ignore St. Paul, the theologian of mission.


Renato Perino

St Paul's conversion

begins in humility. He turns to God in his nothingness: "What do you want me to do?" Prayer for all humility is the nourishment and root of his conversion; persevering humility is what completes it.

Blessed Timothy Giaccardo

Paul preached with equal frankness

to philosophers, kings and tyrants alike, as though he were their teacher and superior; he fearlessly admonished, reproached and punished them.



Cornelius a Lapide, SJ
The Personality of St. Paul

He draws from his interior life

the most varied sentiments in order to awaken, to teach and to convince.

Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

Paul is the most faithful interpreter

of the Gospel, presenting it to all humanity, and applying it in practical terms to individual, family and social necessities.

Blessed James Alberione

As to thy last Apostle's heart

Thy lightning glance did then impart
Zeal's never-dying fire,
So teach us on Thy shrine to lay
Our hearts, and let them day by day
Intenser blaze and higher.


John Keble

You who were a vessel of election for Christ,

...pray for us.
You who were made preacher, apostle and doctor of the Gentiles in truth, pray for us.
You whose apostolate was confirmed by marvels and wonders, pray for us.


Litany of St. Paul

Who can altogether despair

over the enormity of any crime whatever when they hear that Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the Lord's disciples, suddenly becomes a vessel of election?

Bernard of Clairvaux

The Apostle Paul,

an exceptional and virtually inimitable yet stimulating figure, is before us as an example of total dedication to the Lord and his Church, as well as of great openness to humanity and its cultures.

Pope Benedict XVI

[Paul's] mind was

like some instrument of music, harp or viol, the strings of which vibrate, though untouched, by the notes which other instruments give forth, and he was ever, according to his own precept, 'rejoicing with them that rejoice, and weeping with them that wept'."

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Greatly admiring our Redeemer

we sing the marvel of the Savior,
of his mercies and clemency.
Christ chose him to be leader of His flock
who had once raised the cross for the Lamb.

Sequence for the Conversion of St. Paul

The lamp his holy words display

Hath filled the world with glorious rays,
and doubt and error are o'erthrown
that truth may reign and reign alone.

French hymn to St. Paul

St. Paul was consecrated by suffering

to be an Apostle of Christ; by fastings, by chastisements, by self-denials for his brethren's sake, by his forlorn, solitary life, thus did he fill up day by day those intervals of respite which the fury of his persecutors permitted.

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Paul, transcending the things of earth

and lifted above its tumults, enjoyed great peace and tranquility of soul in times of adversity as well as in times of prosperity.


Cornelius a Lapide, SJ
The Personality of St. Paul

No one who has studied him

has been able to escape his magnetism, even those who, like Renan, have hated him and in many respects have misunderstood him.

Henri Daniel-Rops

They could beat him, stone him,

and nearly tear him to pieces in their attempts to lynch him, but as soon as he left their hands, he calmly adjusted his tunic, wiped the blood and sweat from his face, and began to speak to the first person he met, not of himself, but of Christ.


Igino Giordani