Paul Conversion & Christian Unity

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

The Conversion of St Paul, apostle - Feast

St.Paul apostle Conversion

Mass Introduction

It is the Conversion of Paul Feast and the final day of the Octave of Christian Unity.   

The climax is the celebration of Vespers ate the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

The Unity Week work has contributed from the WCC-World Council of Churches, the Pope and so many Churches of Dioceses and Dominations.

The leading of the theme of the Octave was presented by the Churches in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

In Rome. prominent at present is the Session of the Commission of Dialogue between the Catholic and the Ancient Eastern Churches. This is very much to the heart of Pope Benedict as it was by Pope John Paul II.

The large panorama of Christian Unity may feel overwhelming.

To concentrate our focus the wonderful message of St. Francis reminds us. At the chapel of San Damiano in Assisi a voice from the crucifix said. “Now go, hence, Francis, and build up My house, for it is nearly falling down!” It was not the mere chapel but the entire universal Church. Like Francis we are each called to build the universal Church.

At the heart of the universal Church, quietly and silently, in the Eucharist and Communion. United in Christ we are aware of the shortcomings in build his Church.

Note Acts 9:1-22

As we listened to the First Reading Acts 9:1-22, it resounded the more ever than Francis. The encounted of St. Paul with Jesus is even more dramatic.

Saul at Damascus

 TO UNDERSTAND THE SCENE

What you can see in this picture…… A man falls or has just fallen from his horse. A dazzling light comes down from the heaven and it is the blinding that it provokes, and not the horse’s brutal movement, that explains the fall. Paul is listening to the voice that comes from heaven and reproaches him with persecuting Christians. Saul now blind has just converted himself on the way to Damascus.

...and in other pictures Paul is a soldier on his way to Damascus; that is why he is supposed to go on horseback though the text says nothing about it. The horse is present only to show the intensity of the dazzling and the consequent blinding of the horseman, now unable to get up. He is at the same time stupefied and attentive to the words he can hear. Other soldiers often accompany him and watch this fall with astonishment. They sometimes form a real army in the middle of which Paul’s fall is lost or, on the contrary, the hero can be alone to be better put into prominence.

 imagesbible.com/ANGLAIS/ANG.../Ang_conversionPaul.htm