The extraordinary call
From persecutor to apostle! That is the amazing transition that occurs in a flash in the life of Saul of Tarsus, better known by his Roman name Paul.

We meet him for the first time in Acts 7,58 during the slaying of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the church. "Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him; and the witness laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul... and Saul was consenting to his death."

Immediately afterwards we read, "But Saul laid waste the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison." (Acts 8:3) Saul was determined to wipe out the followers of Christ. Little did he realize that his actions scattered the Christians and helped to spread Christianity.

A little further on, "Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem." (Acts 9:1-2)

All of a sudden, we find Saul hurled to the ground stuck by a dazzling light and Jesus telling Ananias to seek Saul and baptize him: "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel." (Acts 9:15) It is still the world's greatest conversion story, the prototype of them all. It is also one of the world's greatest love stories--how one man's implacable hatred became transformed into burning, life-long, self-sacrificing love.

The man
Just where the coast of Asia Minor swings southward towards Palestine, is a small triangular region known as Cilicia, famous for its harbour Tarsus standing on the river Cydnus. For many centuries before Christ, Greeks, Assyrians, Persians, Syrians, Jews, and, last of all, Romans had dwelt in this land. This is where Saul was born around the time when Our Lord may have been fifteen years old.

His family was Jewish, of the tribe of Benjamin. His father was a Roman citizen, yet deeply attached to his religion. He sent his son at the age of 13 to Jerusalem to be trained by the famous Rabbi Gamaliel. Saul graduated as a Doctor of the Law, a Pharisee. "I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers...when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me." (Gal 1:14-16)

His many-sided personality is revealed in his Letters. Martindale describing his character, mentions "his genius for friendship, his quivering sensitiveness, his exquisitely responsible gratitude, his passionate interest in everything - why, even in athletics! His almost motherly tenderness, his white-hot earnestness of conviction. His attention to smallest details, the sublimity of his ideal, his total disregard of physical pain. His delightful sense of humour, his perfect courtesy. The obstinate courage, trying (and failing) to persuade his fellow-Jews, and then attempting to convince the Gentiles (and succeeding), and again, straining to keep his converts loyal to the faith they had professed."

The apostle
Across the mighty square in the middle of the Temple in Jerusalem stood a wall. A marble tablet declared that it was death for a non-Jew to go beyond it.

It was Paul's special mission to announce that in Christ we are all one. "For he is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall."(Eph 2:14) "For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:25-28)

How many journeys he undertook, how many sufferings he endured, how many churches he founded, fill up pages and pages of the Acts of the Apostles.

He introduces himself to the Romans as "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God." To the Corinthians he writes, "Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel." And, "I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls." Again, "I have become al things to all men, that I might by all means save some." In his letter to the Ephesians, he declares: "To me, though I am the least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ."

With touching humility, he speaks of how Christ came to him. "Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me." (1 Cor 15:8-10)

The lover of Christ
From where did Paul derive such tremendous energy? He drew it all from Christ who dwelt in him. "For the love of Christ controls us." (2 Cor 5:14) "For me to live is Christ." (Phil 1:21) "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal 5:20)

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulations, or distress, or persecution, or famine or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... No, in all theses things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, no things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom 8:35-39)

Paul not only established churches. He fed his Christian communities with sound doctrine. And what did he proclaim? That Christ is in you and me, that each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit. We form one body in Christ. We have to grow into other Christs. Let us quote from his letters.

"Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Cor 3:16) "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." (Gal 5:24) "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." (Gal 5:22-23)

"Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it." (1 Cor 12:27) "He is the head of the body, the church." (Col 1:18) "For the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who falls all in all." (Eph 1:22-23)

"We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." (Eph 4:15) "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Rom 13:14) "My little children with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you." (Gal 4:19) "That we may present every man mature in Christ. For this I toil, striving with all the energy which he mightily inspires within me." (Col 1:28-29) "Until we all attain .. to the measure of the fullness of Christ." (Eph 4:13)

"That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Eph 3:17-19)

The martyr
Worn out from the many hardships endured for love of Christ and of the church, Paul was led from his underground prison in Rome by soldiers along the Ostian road to a tiny cluster of pine-trees outside the walls of the city. It was around the year 67 A.D. in the reign of the Emperor Nero.

Christ's servant was stripped, then flogged, and finally beheaded. Friends ere allowed to carry the body to a spot nearer Rome. Later, an inscription was placed over his tomb - PAUL, APOSTLE, MARTYR.

His words to Timothy whom he calls his beloved child, still ring in our ears: "For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing."