In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us that St. Paul’s name originally was Saul and he was a Jew of the diaspora, since the city of Tarsus is situated between Anatolia and Syria. Very soon he went to Jerusalem to study the roots of Mosaic Law in the footsteps of the great Rabbi Gamaliele. He also learned a manual and common trade, tent making, which later permitted him to provide personally for his own support without being a weight on the Churches. It was decisive for him to know the community of those who called themselves disciples of Jesus.

Through them he came to know a new faith – a new “way”, as it was called – that places not so much the Law of God at the centre but rather the person of Jesus, Crucified and Risen, to whom was now linked the remission of sins. As a zealous Jew, he held this message unacceptable, even scandalous, and he therefore felt the duty to persecute the followers of Christ even outside of Jerusalem. It was precisely on the road to Damascus at the beginning of the 30s A.D. that, according to his words, “Christ made me his own”. While Luke recounts the fact with abundant detail – like how the light of the Risen One touched him and fundamentally changed his whole life – in his Letters he goes directly to the essential and speaks not only of a vision, but of an illumination, and above all of a revelation and of a vocation in the encounter with the Risen One. In fact, he will explicitly define himself as “apostle by vocation” or “apostle by the will of God”, as if to emphasize that his conversion was not the result of a development of thought or reflection, but the fruit of divine intervention, an unforeseeable, divine grace.

Henceforth, all that had constituted for him a value paradoxically became, according to his words, a loss and refuse. And from that moment all his energy was placed at the exclusive service of Jesus Christ and his Gospel. His existence would become that of an Apostle who wants to “become all things to all men” without reserve. From here we draw a very important lesson: what counts is to place Jesus Christ at the centre of our lives, so that our identity is marked essentially by the encounter, by communion with Christ and with his Word. In his light every other value is recovered and purified from possible dross. (An exerpt from Pope Benedict XVI’s General Audience Address) Feast: January 25, 2012