Dom Prosper Gueranger:
Whereas the Greeks on this day are uniting in one Solemnity, “the Memory,” as they express it, “of the illustrious Saints, the Twelve Apostles, worthy of all praise,” let us follow in spirit the Roman populace who are gathered around the Successor of Peter, and are making the splendid Basilica on the Via Ostiense re-echo with songs of victory while he is offering to the Doctor of the Gentiles the grateful homage of the City and of the world.
On the twenty fifth of January we beheld Stephen leading to Christ’s mystic crib, the once “ravenous wolf of Benjamin” (Genesis xlix. 27) tamed at last, but who in the morning of his impetuous youth, had filled the Church of God with tears and bloodshed. His evening did indeed come when, as Jacob had foreseen, Saul, the persecutor, would outstrip all his predecessors among Christ’s disciples in giving increase to the Fold, and in feeding the Flock, with the choicest food of his heavenly doctrine.
By an unexampled privilege, Our Lord, though already seated at the Right Hand of His Father, vouchsafed not only to call, but personally to instruct this new disciple so that he might one day be numbered among His Apostles. The ways of God can never be contradictory one to another. Hence this creation of a new Apostle may not be accomplished in a manner derogatory to the divine constitution already delivered to the Christian Church by the Son of God. Therefore, as soon as the illustrious Convert emerges from those sublime contemplations during which the Christian dogma has been poured into his soul, he must needs go to Jerusalem to see Peter, as he himself relates to his disciples in Galatia. “It behoved him,” says Bossuet, “to collate his own Gospel with that of the Prince of the Apostles.”
From that moment, aggregated as a co-operator in the preaching of the Gospel, we see him at Antioch (in the Acts of the Apostles) accompanied by Barnabas, presenting himself to the work of opening the Church to the Gentiles, the conversion of Cornelius having been already effected, be it remembered, by Peter himself. He passes a whole year in this city, reaping an abundant harvest. After Peter’s imprisonment in Jerusalem, at his subsequent departure for Rome, a warning from on high makes known to those who preside over the Church at Antioch that the moment is come for them to impose hands on the two missionaries, and confer on them the sacred character of Ordination.
From that hour, Paul attains the full stature of an Apostle, and it is clear that the mission to which he had been preparing is now opened. At the same time, in Saint Luke’s narrative, Barnabas almost disappears, retaining but a very secondary position. The new Apostle has his own disciples, and he henceforth takes the lead in a long series of peregrinations marked by as many conquests. His first is to Cyprus, where he seals an alliance with ancient Rome analogous to that which Peter contracted at Caesarea. In the year 43, when Paul landed in Cyprus, its pro-consul was Sergius Paulus, illustrious for his ancestry, but still more so for the wisdom of his government. He wished to hear Paul and Barnabas: a miracle worked by Paul under his very eyes convinced him of the truth of his teaching, and the Christian Church counted, that day, among her sons one who was heir to the proudest name among the noble families of Rome. Touching was the mutual exchange that took place on this occasion. The Roman Patrician had just been freed by the Jew from the yoke of the Gentiles. In return the Jew until then called Saul received and thenceforth adopted the name of Paul, as a trophy worthy of the Apostle of the Gentiles.
From Cyprus Paul travelled successively to Cilicia, Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia, everywhere preaching the Gospel and founding Churches. He then returned to Antioch in the year 47, and found the Church there in a state of violent agitation. A party of Jews, who had come over to Christianity from the ranks of the Pharisees, while consenting indeed to the admission of Gentiles into the Church, were maintaining that this could only be on condition of their being likewise subjected to Mosaic practices, such as circumcision, distinction of meats, etc. The Christians who had been received from among the Gentiles were disgusted at this servitude to which Peter had not subjected them, and thus the controversy became so hot that Paul deemed it necessary to undertake a journey to Jerusalem where Peter had lately arrived, a fugitive from Rome, and where the Apostolic College was at that moment furthermore represented by John, as well as by James the bishop of the city. These being assembled to deliberate on the question, it was decreed, in the name and under the influence of the Holy Ghost, that the exacting of anything relative to Jewish rites should be utterly forbidden in the case of Gentile converts. It was on this occasion too, that Paul received from these “Pillars,” as he styles them, the confirmation of this his Apostolate super-added to that of the Twelve, and to be specially exercised in favour of the Gentiles. By this extraordinary ministry deputed to the nations, the Christian Church definitively asserted her independence of Judaism, and the Gentiles could now freely come flocking into her bosom.
Paul then resumed his course of apostolic journeys over all the Provinces he had already evangelised, in order to confirm the Churches. Thence, passing through Phrygia, he came to Macedonia, stayed a while at Athens, and then on to Corinth, where he remained a year and a half, At his departure, he left in this city a flourishing Church by which he excited against him the fury of the Jews. From Corinth, Paul went to Ephesus where he stayed two years. So great was his success with the Gentiles there that the worship of Diana was materially weakened, whereupon a tumult ensuing, Paul thought the moment come for his departure from Ephesus. During his abode there he made known to his disciples a thought that had long haunted him: he must needs see Rome. The Capital of the Gentile world was indeed calling the Apostle of the Gentiles. The rapid growth of Christianity in the Capital of the Empire had brought face-to-face and in a manner more striking than elsewhere, the two heterogeneous elements which formed the Church of that day: the unity of Faith held together in one fold, those that had formerly been Jews, and those that had been pagans.
Now it so happened that some of both of these classes, too easily forgetting the gratuity of their common vocation to the Faith, began to go so far as to despise their brethren of the opposite class, deeming them less worthy than themselves of that Baptism which had made them all equal in Christ. On the one side, certain Jews disdained the Gentiles, remembering the polytheism which had sullied their past life with all those vices which come in its train. On the other side, certain Gentiles contemned the Jews, as coming from an ungrateful and blinded people, who had so abused the favours lavished on them by God as to crucify the Messiah. In the year 53, Paul already aware of these debates, profited of a second journey to Corinth to write to the Faithful of the Church in Rome that famous Epistle in which he emphatically sets forth how gratuitous is the gift of Faith, and maintains how Jew and Gentile alike being quite unworthy of the divine adoption, have been called solely by an act of pure Mercy. He likewise shows how Jew and Gentile, forgetting the past, have but to embrace one another in the fraternity of one same Faith, thus testifying their gratitude to God through whom both of them have been alike prevented by Grace. His Apostolic dignity so fully recognised, authorised Paul to interfere in this matter, though touching a Christian centre not founded by him.
While awaiting the day when he could behold with his own eyes the Queen of all Churches, lately fixed by Peter on the Seven Hills, the Apostle was anxious once again to make a pilgrimage to the City of David. Jewish rage was just at that moment rampant in Jerusalem against him. National pride being more specially piqued, in that he the former disciple of Gamaliel, the accomplice of Stephen’s murder, should now invite the Gentiles to be coupled with the sons of Abraham under the one same Law of Jesus of Nazareth. The Tribune Lysias was scarce able to snatch him from the hands of these bloodthirsty men ready to tear him to pieces. The following night Christ appeared to Paul saying to him: “Be constant, for as you have testified of Me in Jerusalem, so must you bear witness also at Rome.”
It was not, however, till after two years of captivity that Paul, having appealed to Caesar, landed in Italy, at the beginning of the year 56. Then at last, the Apostle of the Gentiles made his entry into Rome. The trappings of a victor surrounded him not. He was but a humble Jewish prisoner led to the place where all appellants to Caesar were mustered. Yet was he that Jew whom Christ Himself had conquered on the way to Damascus. No longer Saul, the Benjamite, he now presented himself under the Roman name of Paul. Nor was this a robbery on his part, for after Peter, he was to be the second glory of Rome, the second pledge of her immortality. He brought not the primacy with him indeed, as Peter had done — for that had been committed by Christ to one alone — but he came to assert in the very centre of the Gentile world the divine delegation which he had received in favour of the nations, just as an affluent flows into the main stream, which mingling its waters with its own, at last empties them united into the ocean. Paul was to have no successor in his extraordinary mission, but the element which he had deposited in the Mistress, the Mother Church, was of such value that in course of ages the Roman Pontiffs, heirs to Peter’s monarchical power, have ever appealed to Paul’s memory as well, pronouncing their mandates in the united names of the “Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”
Instead of having to await in prison the day on which his cause was to be heard, Paul was at liberty to choose a lodging place in the city. He was obliged, however, to be accompanied day and night by a soldier to whom, according to the usual custom, he was chained, but only in such a way as to prevent his escape: all his movements being otherwise left perfectly free, he could easily continue to preach the Word of God. Towards the close of the year 57, in virtue of his appeal to Caesar, the Apostle was at last summoned before the praetorium, and the successful pleading of his cause resulted in his acquittal. Being now free, Paul revisited the East, confirming on his Evangelical course the Churches he had previously founded. Thus Ephesus and Crete once more enjoyed his presence. In the one he left his disciple Timothy as bishop, and in the other Titus.
But Paul had not quitted Rome forever: marvellously illumined as she had been, by his preaching, the Roman Church was yet to be gilded by his parting rays and purpled by his blood. A heavenly warning, as in Peter’s case, bade him also return to Rome where martyrdom was awaiting him. This fact is attested by Saint Athanasius. We learn the same also from Saint Asterius of Ameseus who remarks that the Apostle entered Rome once more, “in order to teach the very masters of the world, to turn them into his disciples, and by their means to wrestle with the whole human race.” “There, Paul finds Peter engaged in the same work. He at once yokes himself to the same divine chariot with him, and sets about instructing the children of the Law within the Synagogues, and the Gentiles outside.” At length Rome possesses her two Princes conjointly: the one seated on the eternal chair, holding in his hands the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the other surrounded by the sheaves he has garnered from the fields of the Gentile world. They will now part no more. Even in death, as the Church sings, they will not be separated. The period of their being together was necessarily short, for they must needs render to their Master the testimony of blood before the Roman world should be freed from the odious tyranny under which it was groaning.
Their death was to be Nero’s last crime. After that he was to fade from sight, leaving the world horrors stricken at his end, as shameful as it was tragic. It was in the year 65, that Paul returned to Rome. once more signalising his presence there by the manifold works of his Apostolate. From the time of his first labours there, he had made converts even in the very palace of the Caesars: being now returned to this former theatre of his zeal, he again finds entrance into the imperial abode. A woman who was living in criminal intercourse with Nero, as likewise a cup-bearer of his, were both caught in the Apostolic net, for it were hard indeed to resist the power of that mighty word. Nero, enraged at “this foreigner’s” influence in his very household, was bent on Paul’s destruction. Being first of all cast into prison, his zeal cooled not, but he persisted the more in preaching Jesus Christ. The two converts of the imperial palace having abjured, together with paganism, the manner of life they had been leading, this two-fold conversion of theirs did but hasten Paul’s martyrdom. He was well aware that it would be so, as can be seen in these lines addressed to Timothy: “I labour even to bands, as an evil doer. But the word of God is not bound. Therefore, I endure all things for the sake of the elect. For I am even now ready to be sacrificed, like a victim already sprinkled with the lustral water, and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought the good " fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in that day” (2 Timothy).
On the 29th of June 67 AD, while Peter having crossed the Tiber by the Triumphal bridge was drawing near to the cross prepared for him on the Vatican plain, another martyrdom was being consummated on the left bank of the same river. Paul, as he was led along the Via Ostiensis, was also followed by a group of the Faithful who mingled with the escort of the condemned. His sentence was that he should be beheaded at the Salvian Waters. A two miles’ march brought the soldiers to a path leading eastwards, by which they led their prisoner to the place fixed upon for the martyrdom of this, the Doctor of the Gentiles. Paul fell on his knees, addressing his last prayer to God. Then having bandaged his eyes, he awaited the death-stroke. A soldier brandished his sword, and the Apostle’s head, as it was severed from the trunk, made three bounds along the ground. Three fountains immediately sprang up on these several spots. Such is the local tradition, and to this day, three fountains are to be seen on the site of his martyrdom, over each of which an altar is raised.
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To you, O Paul, we turn this day! Happily fixed as we are on Peter, the Rock that supports the Church, could we possibly forget you by whose labours our forefathers the Gentiles became part of the City of God? Sion, once the well-beloved, rejected the Stone and stumbled against it. Tell us then the mystery of this other Jerusalem come down from Heaven, the materials of which were nevertheless drawn up from the abyss! Compacted together in admirable masonry, they proclaim the glory of the skilful Architect who laid them on the Corner-Stone. And precious stones of such surpassing brilliancy are they, as to out-shine all the gems of the Daughter of Sion. To whom is this new-comer indebted for all her beauty, for all these her bridal honours? How have the sons of the forsaken one come out from the unclean dens where their mother dwelt, a companion of dragons and of leopards? (Canticles iv. 8). It is because the Voice of the Spouse was heard saying: “Come, my Bride, come from Libanus; from the top of Amana, from the top of Sanir and Hermon.”
Nevertheless, the Spouse in His own Sacred Person, while He lived here below, never quitted the ancient Land of Promise, and His mortal accents never once fell on the ear of her who dwelt beyond the confines of Jacob. But, Paul, did you not exclaim: “How will they call on Him, how believe Him of whom they have not heard? (Romans x. 14). Yet whoever knows your love of the Spouse has nothing to fear, mindful that you yourself, holy Apostle, have proposed the problem and can solve it. Lo, this is the answer — we sang it on the day of Christ’s triumphant Ascension: “"When the beauty of the Lord will arise above the heavens, He will be mounted on a cloud, and the wing of the wind will be His swift steed; and, clad in light, He will dart from pole to pole across the heavens, giving His gifts to the children of men.”
You yourself, Paul, are this cloud, this wing of the wind bearing the Bridegroom’s message to the nations. Yes, you were expressly chosen from on high to teach the Gentiles, as those pillars of the Church, Peter James, and John, have attested (Galatians ii. 7-9). How beauteous your feet, when having quitted Sion, you appeared on our mountains and cried out to the Gentiles: “This God will reign” (Isaias lii. 7). How sweet your voice, when it murmured in the ear of the poor forsaken one the heavenly call: “Hearken, daughter, and see, and incline the ear of your heart” (Psalms xliv. 11). How tender the pity you evinced to her who had long lived a stranger to the Covenant, without promise, without a God in this world! (Ephesians ii. 12).
Alas, afar off indeed was she whom it behoved you to lead to the Lord Jesus and to bring so near Him, that He and she should form but one body! You experienced, in this immense labour, both the pains of childbirth and the cares of a mother giving the breast to her new-born babe. You had to bear the tedious delay of the growth of the Bride to ward from her every defilement, to inure her gradually to the dazzling light of the Spouse, until, at last, rooted and founded in charity, and having reached to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ she might indeed be His glory, and be filled by Him to all the plenitude of God. But what a toil to bring up this new creation from the original slime to the throne of the heavenly Adam at the Right Hand of the Father! Often repulsed, betrayed, put in chains, misunderstood in the most delicate sentiments of thine Apostolic heart, you had nothing for your salary save untold anguish and suffering. Yet, fatigue, watchings, hunger, cold, nakedness, abandonment, open violence, perfidious attacks, perils of all kinds, far from abating, did but excite your zeal. Joy super-abounded in you, for these sufferings were the filling up of those which Jesus had endured to purchase that alliance so long ambitioned by Eternal Wisdom. After His example, you too had but one end to which tended all your strength and gentleness: along the dusty Roman roads, or tempest-tossed into the depth of the sea, in the city or the desert, borne aloft on ecstatic wing into the third heavens, or bowed beneath the whips of the Jews and the sword of a Nero: everywhere bearing the embassy of Christ you boldly defied alike life and death, powers of Earth and powers of Heaven, to stay the Might of the Lord or of His Love by which you were upheld in your vast enterprise. Then as if aware by anticipation, of the amazement that would be excited by these enthusiastic outpourings of your great soul, you uttered this sublime cry: “Would to God that you could bear with some little of my folly: but hear with me, for I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God. For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians xi. 1-2).
Yesterday, Paul, your work was ended. Having given all, you at length gave yourself. The sword, by striking off your sacred head, accomplished Christ’s triumph as you had predicted. Peter’s death fixes the throne of the Spouse in its predestined place, but to you is the Bride, the Gentile world, indebted for that she is now able, as she sits at the right hand of the Spouse, to turn to the rival Synagogue exclaiming: “I am black, but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem. Therefore has the King loved me and chosen me to be His Queen! (Canticles i. 4; iv. 8).
Praise then be to you, Apostle, now and forever! Eternity itself will not suffice to exhaust the gratitude of us, the “Nations.” Accomplish your work in each one of us during all ages . Permit not that by the falling off of any one among those called by Our Lord to complete His Mystic Body, the Bride be deprived of one single increase on which she might have counted. Uphold and brace against despondency the Preachers of the Sacred Word, all those who by the pen or by any title whatever, are continuing your work of light. Multiply those valiant Apostles who are ever narrowing on our globe the boundaries of darkness. You promised to remain with us, to be ever watchful of Faith’s progress in souls, and to cause the pure delights of divine union to be ever developing there. Keep your promise. Because of your going away to Jesus, your word is nonetheless plighted to those who like ourselves could not know you here below. For to those who have not seen your face in the flesh, you have left, in one of your immortal Epistles, the assurance that you will take care “that their hearts be comforted, being instructed in charity, and to all riches of fullness of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of Christ Jesus, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossian ii. 1-3).
During this season of the sacred Cycle, the reign of the Holy Spirit who forms saints (Romans viii.), grant that Christians of good will may be brought to understand how, by their very Baptism, they are put in possession of that sublime vocation which is too often imagined to be the happy lot of but a chosen few. Oh would that they could seize this grand yet very simple idea which you have given of the mystery in which is contained the absolute and universal principle of Christian Life (Romans vi.): that, having been buried with Jesus under the waters, and thereby incorporated with Him, they must necessarily be bound by every right and title, to become saints, to aim at union with Jesus in His Life, since they have been granted union with Him in His Death. “You are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God!” (Colossians iii. 3). These were the words addressed by you to our forefathers: O then repeat them to us likewise, for you gave them as a truth intended for all without distinction! Suffer not, Doctor of us, Gentiles, that the Light grow dim among us, to the great detriment of the Lord and of His Bride.Epistle – Galatians i. 11‒20
I give you to understand, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For neither did I receive it of man: nor did I learn it but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion: how that, beyond measure, I persecuted the church of God and wasted it. And I made progress in the Jews’ religion above many of my equals in my own nation, being more abundantly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased Him who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles: immediately I condescended not to flesh and blood. Neither went I to Jerusalem, to the apostles who were before me: but I went into Arabia, and again I returned to Damascus. Then, after three years, I went to Jerusalem to see Peter: and I tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles I saw none, saving James the brother of the Lord. Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I lie not.Thanks be to God.
Gospel – Matthew x. 16‒22
Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves. Simple... that is, harmless, plain, sincere, and without guile. But beware of men. For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And you will be brought before governors, and before kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles: But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what to speak: for it will be given you in that hour what to speak: For it is not you that speaks, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you. The brother also will deliver up the brother to death, and the father the son; and the children will rise up against their parents, and will put them to death. And you will be hated by all men for my name’s sake: but he who perseveres to the end will be saved.Praise be to you, O Christ.
Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
At Limoges in France, St. Martial, bishop, with two priests, Alpinian and Austriclinian, whose lives were distinguished for miracles.
The same day, the saints Caius, priest, and Leo, subdeacon.
At Alexandria, the passion of St. Basilides, under the emperor Severus. He protected from the insults of profligate men the saintly virgin Potamioena, whom he was leading to execution, and received from her the reward of his pious action. For, at the end of three days, she appeared to him and placing a crown on his head, not only converted him to Christ, but by her prayers made of him, after a short combat, a glorious martyr.
At Rome, St. Lucina, a disciple of the Apostles, who relieved the necessities of the saints with her goods, visited the Christians detained in prison, buried the martyrs, and was laid by their side in a crypt constructed by herself.
In the same city, St. Æmiliana, martyr.
In the territory of Viviers, St. Ostian, priest and confessor.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
