The Conversion of St Paul: a message for all of us today

The Conversion of St Paul: a message for all of us today. See post at Jericho Tree.

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From second century Egypt to twenty first century Babel

We only had one day wandering round Dublin, but I managed to see some incredible things. I’m ashamed to say that I had never heard of the Chester Beatty Library, but one of the seminarians persuaded us to visit there first, and the manuscripts are absolutely outstanding. I won’t splurge or use the exclamation mark; just let me copy this short description of some of the exhibits from their website:

The early New Testament papyri are, for many visitors, the greatest Christian treasures to be seen at the Library.

These incredible discoveries were first made public in The Times (19 November 1931). Before this find, the earliest and most important manuscripts of the Greek New Testament were parchment codices from the fourth and fifth centuries, all dating from the period after Constantine had granted toleration to Christianity.

Only a few small fragments of papyrus with portions of the New Testament from an earlier date were known, and most of these were too small to be of much significance.

The discovery of the Chester Beatty New Testament papyri caused a sensation; they were at least 100 years older than the most important parchment codices at that time.

The papyri not only contained much larger portions of the New Testament than any previously known papyri, but also provided a unique witness to the biblical text at a time when Christianity was experiencing extensive persecution and destruction of its scriptures.

By acquiring these early Christian texts, including the earliest surviving codex of the gospels and acts, the earliest copy of Saint Paul’s Letters and the earliest copy of the Book of Revelation, as well as many other early or unique versions of homilies, epistles or pseudo-canonical texts, Chester Beatty’s Library became one of the major centres in the world for the study of the Christian Bible.

Here is the section about St Paul:

This significant New Testament papyrus in the Chester Beatty collection contains the texts of the letters of St. Paul, dating from around the years AD 180-200. It is one of the great treasures to survive from the early Christian church.

Paul’s letters are among the earliest surviving Christian texts and are a unique witness to the spread of Christianity and the Gospels. Only four other known papyri contain portions of more than one of Paul’s letters, and of these four, two are of a much later date. The early date of the Chester Beatty codex and the fact that it contains almost the complete text of the letters of Paul, makes this codex extremely important for the study of the text of Paul’s letters.

There was also a fragment from St John’s Gospel from the second half of the second century. I can’t resist an exclamation mark here: it was incredible! It was the Greek text of Jesus saying to Mary, ‘Woman, here is your son’, and to the Beloved Disciple, ‘Here is your mother’.

If you want to follow the St Paul up further, see the Michigan website here about the P46 codex.

I had lunch with a friend at the Dominican friary at St Saviour’s, tea in the centre of the city with another friend, and then a very disappointing pilgrimage to the church where Venerable Matt Talbot is buried – it was closed! I couldn’t believe it; in the middle of the Eucharistic Congress one of the most important shrines in Dublin was closed. Oh well – lucky I managed to venerate his relics at one of the stalls at the Exhibition Hall in the Congress earlier in the week. And then I managed to get half an hour in the Hugh Lane Gallery to see the Francis Bacon studio. If I get time I’ll post about Matt Talbot and Francis Bacon later on.

The reason we ended up in Babel was because of the Dublin Spire (or Spike as most people seemed to call it). I couldn’t find a single person in the city who liked it – and I asked lots of them out of curiosity. But I thought it was wonderful. Tall (obviously), graceful, somehow full of meaning and utterly meaningless at the same time. It is the ultimate Tower of Babel – reaching for the sky simply because that’s what human beings do.

And it created the marvellous illusion, if you stand about ten feet from the base, that it actually continues up and up without limits and pierces the clouds – like Jack’s beanstalk.

So it was a fascinating few hours in Dublin, and I hope I can go back sometime soon and visit everything I didn’t see; and get into Matt’s church!

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Patron saint of the internet

He doesn’t have the official title (that belongs to St Isidore), but I think Father James Alberione could well be considered as the patron saint of the internet. He never lived to see it develop (Arpanet began in 1969, two years before he died), but as founder of the Pauline family he probably did more for the Catholic Church’s commitment to social communications and the media than anyone else in history.

St Paul - not Fr Alberione!

Here is one quote:

The future will be won with an army of well-formed vocations and with the most modern and rapid means of communication placed at the service of the apostolate. It is a known characteristic of our times that an extensive array of publications opposes the Church… A counter organisation is needed, large, strong, of ancient spirit and modern form; it means the apostolate of publishing exercised not through a single undertaking but by an undertaking of universal character with an army of persons as its service…multiplying its fruits in time and space.

Think of what he would have done with the internet!

The magazine Famiglia Christiana is one of the best known Pauline publications. One of its recent directors reflects on the spirit of Fr Alberione.

The intuition of Father Alberione lies in having the fastest and most effective means of social communication as instruments of the apostolate. He also developed industrial methods which demand continuous updating and the complementarity of many sectors of the work. It is industry at the service of the Church; it is the definitive renunciation of a certain type of craftsman. More than this, it is the rejection of a managing-to-get-alone attitude. Books, newspapers, films and recordings must be produced and marketed professionally to be effective; it is not enough simply to want them to do good.

That last sentence could be applied to many aspects of the Church’s pastoral life.

[Quotes are from a little pamphlet I’ve just read called James Alberione by Valentino Gambi, published by St Pauls.]

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