The Commemoration of Saint Paul

Apostle to the Gentiles
(died c. 64–68)

The Commemoration of Saint Paul, celebrated on June 30th, is the octave day of the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and on this day the Church turns its attention more particularly to the life, labours, and martyrdom of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. Paul stands, with Peter, as one of the two supreme figures of the apostolic age, and the commemoration on this day gives the faithful an opportunity to reflect more fully on the extraordinary life and teaching of this most prolific of all the New Testament writers.

Saul of Tarsus, who would become Paul, was born a Roman citizen in the city of Tarsus in Cilicia, educated at the feet of the great Pharisaic teacher Gamaliel in Jerusalem, and emerged as one of the most zealous upholders of the Jewish law among the young men of his generation. His encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus was total and transforming. He heard a voice asking him why he was persecuting Him, and in that moment the persecutor became the Apostle. He was baptised by Ananias, received his sight, and began immediately to preach in the synagogues that Jesus was the Son of God.

What followed was a missionary career of unparalleled energy and scope. Three great journeys carried Paul through Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, and finally to Rome itself. He established churches in Galatia, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, and countless other cities. Everywhere he went he faced opposition, persecution, flogging, stoning, shipwreck, and imprisonment, and everywhere he continued to preach the Gospel with the same burning conviction. He described his own apostolic suffering in the Second Letter to the Corinthians with a candour and depth of feeling that has moved every generation of Christian readers.

His letters, written to the communities he had founded and to individual disciples like Timothy and Titus, are the earliest Christian documents after the Gospels and have shaped Christian theology more profoundly than any other human writings except Scripture itself. His great themes, the justification of sinners by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, the universality of the Gospel, the mystical Body of Christ, the role of the Holy Spirit, and the resurrection of the dead, have been the subjects of Christian reflection and debate in every age.

He was martyred in Rome under Nero, beheaded on the Via Ostiense, and his tomb beneath the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls is one of the great pilgrimage destinations of the Christian world. The commemoration of his feast on June 30th invites the faithful to take up again his letters, to read them with fresh attention, and to be renewed in that faith and charity which were the consuming passions of his remarkable life.