St. Paul in our midst
by Lucetta Scaraffia
Translated from
the 6/30-7/1/09 issue of
Certainly it has not been only lately that the world appears divided and disconcerted because of contingencies that are doubtless difficult and unpleasant to confront, but also and more especially, because a cultural and scientific change is under way in the West that is a threat to the human being himself.
Never before, in fact, has the divine likeness recognizable in every human being - which alone should warrant his dignity - come under such attack. The news that recurs in the media is almost always negative, showing us a picture of our society that has so little positive about it that at times, it seems it has been irreparably injured.
All this weighs down on us like a black cloud, from which it is difficult to imagine how we could possibly emerge.
But something has happened these days that has made us lift our sights higher, to make us understand what we should be mindful of, in order to change such a depressing world.
Among the mundane news that crowd the media, somehow a 'new' face has made its mark - a balding bearded man, with deep gentle eyes and furrowed brow, who looks down at us from across 16 centuries: the face of Paul of Tarsus, which has re-emerged almost miraculously in the hands of a restoration worker at the Roman catacombs of St. Tecla.
It is a face marked with profound meanings. And we have been left breathless not only by the extraordinary coincidence of the discovery with the conclusion of the jubilee year dedicated to him by the Catholic Church [the portrait came to light on June 19) but by its timely appearance amidst the disorder of our day.
In the face of Paul - recognizable because of the iconography that had become the conventional way to depict him in the context of an an-iconic culture like Judaism and early Christianity - we see features typically associated with the ancient Greek philosophers (particularly Plato or Plotinus) in someone who was one of the founding figures of Christianity.
Thus we see in him the roots of our culture, Athens and Jerusalem, turning up before our eyes unexpectedly to remind of us of who we are, or better, of who we have forgotten we are.
And to this wise portrait that looks back at us was soon added another sensational news: scientific inquiry conducted for the first time in what long unbroken tradition has always venerated as the apostle's tomb appears to confirm that his mortal remains indeed lie there, in that tomb, buried with gold-threaded purple garments deemed appropriate for one of the founders of the Church of Rome by the early Christians who buried him after his martyrdom.
With these double discoveries, the extraordinary Pauline jubilee - which had until then been confined almost only within the confines of the Catholic world
[also to the Orthodox world, since Bartholomew I promptly followed Benedict XVI's initiative and proclaimed a Pauline Year likewise for the Greek Orthodox Churches], and sometimes with observances which were rather routine - suddenly took on new life, 'invading' even the secularized world which is generally deaf to the affairs of saints.
It is as if Paul is telling us that he is here, among us, and he wants us to listen. And if we listen to him, this fundamental figure who is at the roots of our civilization - not just in the religious sense, but culturally, morally and philosophically - he has much to say to us in these wretched times, extraordinary things which have the flavor of truth and novelty.
Paul teaches us that in life everything can change, everything can make sense and impose a new direction: his conversion on the road to Damascus remains the model of all the true and profound changes that a human being is capable of, the model for a fundamental turning-point that illuminates life, that in changing one man, can transform an entire society.
Paul teaches us that if we ourselves become renewed, then we can renew the world.
That unforeseen violent moment of conversion - that is, the reversal of a wrong direction to the right one and carries along whoever makes the change - has been the subject of numerous works of art in the Christian tradition, even if perhaps no one has represented it with such power as the sinner Caravaggio, as well as equally numerous narrations, biographical and autobiographical fictions.
In all of them it appears that Paul is associated with sudden apparitions, strong and clear, like his exhortations to change direction if one is headed the wrong way, and to move ahead with energy and courage.
For the believer, the message is clear, as Benedict XVI has explained in his profound and lucid way. But I believe that even the non-believer can grasp it: From Athens and Jerusalem, through Paul, to every person, comes an invitation to rise up from the depths and begin a new life.