In the city of Tarsus, in the south of the land we now call Turkey, a Jewish boy was born and given the name Saul. Tarsus was a large, busy city full of merchants and schools and ships, and Saul's family held a rare privilege there: they were citizens of Rome. That meant rights almost nobody in the empire had, and one day it would make a great deal of difference.

Saul learned two things at once. He learned a trade with his hands, tentmaking, stitching the heavy cloth woven from goat hair, because among his people even scholars were expected to earn their own bread. And he learned the Law of God with his head: he was sent to Jerusalem, where he studied at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most respected teachers in the city. Saul became a Pharisee, one of those who keep every commandment with enormous care, and no young man was more dedicated than he was.

It was that very care that turned him into a persecutor. When people began appearing in Jerusalem saying that Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and buried, was alive, Saul was certain it was a dangerous lie. And he believed he was serving God by fighting it.

The Young Man Who Held the Cloaks

One of the followers of Jesus was named Stephen. He spoke with such courage that his opponents could not answer him, so they dragged him outside the city and stoned him to death. The men who threw the stones took off their cloaks to move more freely and laid them at the feet of a young man. That young man was Saul, and the Acts of the Apostles say that he approved of the killing.

From that day on, Saul became the worst enemy the young Church had. He went into houses, hauled men and women out of them and put them in prison. When he heard that there were followers of Jesus in the faraway city of Damascus, he asked the authorities in Jerusalem for letters allowing him to arrest them too, and set out with a few companions.

The Light in the Middle of the Road

It was a long journey of several days along dusty roads. They were almost at Damascus when a light from heaven, stronger than the noonday sun, suddenly blazed all around Saul. He fell to the ground. And he heard a voice calling him by name.

— Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Saul understood nothing. Trembling, he asked who was speaking to him.

— I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Get up and go into the city, and there you will be told what to do.

The men travelling with him stood speechless: they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, opened his eyes and found that he could not see a thing. They had to lead him into Damascus by the hand, he who had left Jerusalem so sure of himself. For three days he could not see, and he neither ate nor drank, trying to understand what had happened to him.

Ananias, Who Went Anyway

There lived in Damascus a disciple named Ananias. In a vision, the Lord asked him to go and find Saul of Tarsus, in the house of a man called Judas, on the street called Straight. Ananias was terrified, and he answered quite honestly that many people had already told him how much harm this man had done to the Christians of Jerusalem, and that he had come to Damascus precisely to arrest the ones who were there.

— Go — said the Lord. — This man is an instrument I have chosen to carry my name before the nations, before kings, and before the people of Israel.

Ananias went. He walked into the house, found the blind persecutor sitting there, and the first word he said to him is the most astonishing thing in the whole story.

— Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road, has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Ananias laid his hands on him. At that moment something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see. He got up, was baptised, ate something, and his strength came back. A few days later, to the amazement of the whole city, he was in the synagogues of Damascus announcing that Jesus is the Son of God.

The Basket and the Friend

It was not long before people wanted him dead. They watched the city gates day and night, waiting to seize him on his way out. So the disciples had an idea worthy of an adventure story: in the dark before dawn they put Saul inside a big basket and lowered him through an opening in the wall to the ground outside. That is how the greatest missionary in history escaped from the first city where he preached — hanging on a rope.

In Jerusalem, nobody wanted to go near him. The disciples were afraid, and did not believe that such a man had really changed. Only one of them was willing to vouch for him: Barnabas, who took him by the hand, brought him to the apostles and told them everything that had happened on the road. Years later it was Barnabas again who went to Tarsus to fetch him to work in the community at Antioch — the city where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians.

The Roads of the Empire

From then on, Saul's life was the open road. He began using his Roman name, Paul, and with Barnabas and other companions he crossed islands, mountains and seas, looking for anywhere at all that would listen. Wherever he arrived he went first to the synagogue; after that he spoke in the square, at the harbour, in the house of whoever took him in. And so as not to be a burden to anyone, he set up his workbench and went back to sewing tents, exactly as he had learned to do as a boy.

The stories of those journeys fill the Acts of the Apostles. At Philippi a cloth merchant named Lydia, who sold purple, listened to Paul beside a river and opened her house to him. In that same city Paul and his companion Silas were thrown into prison, where they sang psalms until an earthquake shook the doors open; instead of running, they stayed, and the astonished jailer ended up asking for baptism along with his whole family. In Athens, Paul noticed an altar dedicated to an unknown god and used it to tell the philosophers about the God they did not yet know. In Corinth he worked and lodged with a couple who made tents, Aquila and Priscilla.

Not everything was a triumph. There were cities that threw him out, a crowd that stoned him, shipwrecks, hunger, nights in the open. Paul listed it all in one of his letters, without boasting, like a man going over old accounts.

The Letters

When he could not go back to a community, Paul wrote. He dictated his letters to a helper and then, at the end, took the pen himself and wrote the greeting in his own large handwriting, so they would know it was really from him. He wrote to the Christians of Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae and Thessalonica, and to friends like Timothy, Titus and Philemon.

In those letters he argued, explained, apologised, made travel plans, and every so often stopped everything to write something so beautiful that the world never forgot it. It was in a letter to the Corinthians that he said we may speak every language, know every mystery and have faith enough to move mountains — and that without love, none of it is worth anything. Those letters are still read at Mass today, in every language on earth.

Rome

On one of his returns to Jerusalem, Paul was arrested in the temple in the middle of a riot. He spent two years held at Caesarea, questioned by governors who had no idea what to do with him. So he used the right he had carried since birth: as a Roman citizen, he appealed to the emperor, and had to be sent to Rome for trial.

The voyage was dreadful. The ship was caught in a storm that lasted a fortnight and finally broke apart on a beach on the island of Malta, though every soul on board reached the sand alive. Months later Paul entered Rome, the capital of the world, as a prisoner. He rented a house at his own expense and stayed there two years with a soldier guarding him, receiving anyone who cared to visit and announcing the Kingdom of God with nobody stopping him. That is where the Acts of the Apostles come to an end.

The tradition of the early Christians tells the rest. During the persecution under the emperor Nero, Paul was arrested again and condemned to death. Because he was a Roman citizen he was not crucified: he was beheaded outside the city walls, on the road that runs down to the port of Ostia. Christians kept the place of his grave with a care that lasted through the centuries, and over it was raised the basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, which still stands today.

In one of his last letters, written from prison, he added up his own life in three short lines: