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