The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1922-02-04
ST. PAUL'S DAY HONORED

cry of the crowd in the Agora at Ath-
ems, blasphemed by Jews at Corinth,
struck with the tumult of the Demetri-
an silversnlithS of Diana at Ephesus,
savagely assaulted by the whole peo-
pie at Jerusalem, scourged, and then
decapitated by the cruelest of Roman
Emperors, Paul remained through it
all the gentle, strong, ardent and en-
thusiastic missionary, with constant
elevation of character and an unswerv-
ing fidelity to the divine cause and
apostolate of Jesus Christ, who strove
to build the fortress of world Chris
tianity on the stone between the fort
ress of Maspheth and of Seu, between
the land of belief and the land of unbe.
lief; and if the Church of the fifth CEN
tury had held the descendants of his
converts, the census taker would have
to count double the number of the
adherents of the See of Peter in the
nineteenth.
Vigorous and Tender.
And why all this? Because, in no
mind did the doctrine of Jesus ever
fructify so vigorously as in that of ST.
Paul. Better than anyone else, he un-
derstood what it means to love God
This begot an enthusiasm which lit
up with the palpitating glow Of an or
iental imagination, and, as a conse-
quence, his sacrifice was unmeasured
! because his love of truth was unmeas-
ureable. Thus, there developed in him
character which was dominated by
a resistless will, masterful, yet withal,
sympathetic.
| He wrote more than the other apos-
| ties together, and the most extensive
| of the books Of the New Testament is
largely given over to the story of his
| life. His epistles are bursts of elo-
quence, which have captivated sue.
eeeding generations for nearly two
thousand years; and at that, they are
polemics for Jesus Christ. The short,
burning epithet runs into the rapid,
searching phrase, and into the short,
nervous sentence, quivering with ex-
cess of energy. BY nature a critic
and dialectician, there runs through
all his writings, argument, incidental
! observation, play of exhortation, re-
| monstrance, irony, affection The
| quintessence of doctrine is contained
In the Epistle to the Romans, and
without the Epistle to the Hebrews,
with its sublime theology, the Church
would be deprived of proof of her sac
ramental system and of the heavenly
character OF her priesthood. He wrote
the tenderest of all his Epistles to
the Philippians, and to the Galatians
who were ready, as he says, to pluck
out their eyes and to give them to him
His writings have been "wrested by
l the ignorant and unstable to their own
destruction, and SO it happened thai
Luther, through perverted interpre
tation of the Romans, launched the
/ Protestant Reformation. He was q
dogmatist, with clear, precise, straight
forward assertions; if he had been less
SO, he might have had one half dozer
converts without arousing the jealousy
of single synagogue.
Jew and Greek.
i The Greece of his time was guided
by the ruling principles of unregener
ate human nature: the pleasure o
sense, which led to degrading of tn,
deity, then denial of the divinity, ant
. atheism. which Epieurus formulated
into system. There was the othe
principle-p pride, which, changed til,
; deity into fate. begot a false notion
of virtue, developed finally into pan
theism, which became the basis of th,
thought of zeno and Seneca, the Ste
les. There was, in addition, the sker
ticism of Pyrrho, which was indulge,
in by a few select thinkers.
Again, it is asserted against his di
tContinued on page So