The Heart of Paul

Paul’s Practice of Earnestness

Earnestness – No Half Measures

“Let me do that,” is the cry we hear from the lips of the earnest and strenuous. They cannot bear remissness or delay; they will not tolerate indifference. They will hurriedly take the work from another, should he be the least uninterested. Their energy piles up behind an obstacle, as a torrent behind some barrier which for a moment checks its onward rush. They press here and there, strain fretfully at their temporary prison, and finally with a burst of speed over-leap all hindrances and sweep on triumphantly. No half measures for them! When they are rulers, they are Napoleons; when discoverers, they have the restless ambitions of Columbus; when they would be orators, they will bury themselves in caverns, out-shout the ocean and exile themselves from their fellow-men, like Demosthenes, until they have reached perfection; when they would be saints, no toil is too arduous, no sacrifice too great, no undertaking too vast or dangerous. The bleak desert or the filthy slums, the monotonous grind of the classroom, the patience, and watching and endurance of the hospital, the slow death among the leprous, these and thousands of such difficulties are the merest trifles to those who are in earnest.

Earnestness of Paul Unconverted

Saint Paul was a man of no half-hearted measures. He himself says: “Beyond measure I persecuted the Church and wasted it.” He held the garments for those who stoned Stephen, that they might have freer arms to do the work more thoroughly. He went to Damascus, “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.” No call like that which summoned the other Apostles would do for him. The sweet invitation, the gentle entreaty, would scarcely halt such a fiery zealot in his mission of destruction. To make Saul, Paul, a sudden light must flash from Heaven, the persecutor must be stricken down by a stronger force than his own. Then, trembling and blinded, he will humbly ask to see and be taught and become a Christian and an Apostle.

Earnestness of Paul Converted

Saint Paul’s conversion did not change his heart; it simply changed the direction of his heart’s rushing currents. His heart now enlarged its scope without diminishing its intense force. It became a vessel of election, an instrument in the hand of God for greater good. Like the sun in Ecclesiasticus which is called “an admirable vessel, the work of the most High.” three times more hot than a furnace, he “burns the mountains, breathing out fiery vapors and shining with his beams.” The fire of hatred was changed in Paul’s heart to the fire of charity, and Palestine became too small for him. “He increased much more in strength” and was to carry the name of the Lord “before the Gentiles and Kings and children of Israel.” The light of God’s truth that had been hidden in one nation, was destined to rise above the horizon of Palestine and dawn upon the whole world. The heart of Paul cried: “Let me do that,” and went forth over lands and seas, bringing to mankind the charity of Christ.

Earnestness of Paul’s Lore

No one, we might say, has tortured language, as Saint Paul has done, to make it a fit expression for the earnestness of his heart, and nowhere is he more magnificent, more sublime, more universal than when speaking of charity. His words quiver like the metal walls of a trumpet when it vibrates with a mighty volume of sound. On this subject the “trumpet gives no uncertain sound.” Who will limit the extent of Saint Paul’s charity? “Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Who will fathom the source of his charity which flows from his full knowledge of God? “O the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments and how unsearchable His ways!” “I judged not myself to know anything among you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” His charity has all tenderness: “Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears that you might know the charity I have more abundantly toward you.” His charity awakens a tender response: “I bear you witness, O Galatians, that if it could be done, you would have plucked out your own eyes and would have given them to me.” He was father and mother and nurse to his little children whom he had begotten again in Christ. He would in the excess of his charity become accursed, an anathema, for them. A faith which would remove mountains, the distribution of all his goods to the poor, the burning of his body in martyrdom, are less than charity and are nothing without charity. In the exultation of his great love, Saint Paul triumphantly defies creation with all its mighty forces to tear his heart from the Heart of Christ. “Shall tribulation? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword?” With indignant scorn he repudiates the possibility. The heart that consented to the death of Stephen, now made one with Christ in the bonds of charity, is sure “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul’s Principles of Earnestness

Christ Crucified – the Ideal

Saint Paul did not use the words, devotion to the Sacred Heart, but he practised what the words describe, and he was restless with the fiery zeal which inflamed him to make all possess the charity of Christ. His teaching was as earnest as his practice. He is relentless, untiring in preaching the love of Christ crucified. Crucifixion and death is the only thing to satisfy him. As a zealot, he put people to death; as a Christian, he would have his followers meet death. He advocates martyrdom, preaches martyrdom, calls for martyrdom, and enacts martyrdom. Not Christ and Christ born or teaching or working miracles or sowing the seed of God; not Christ glorified, but Christ crucified is the lesson that the fiery heart of Paul is always imparting. Nothing short of a complete absorption in Christ’s love will do.

Be United with Christ

Saint Paul calls us the letters of Christ, which He has written and sealed. A letter is a substitute for the absent friend; it is the flying spark which enkindles a far off fire; it is a throb of the heart of friendship. Christ wrote us, put into us the secrets of His love and addressed us to Heaven. The address is written in blood-red. In many other ways also is our loving union with Christ described by Saint Paul. We must be His good odor, the perfume of Christ exhaling His virtues. We must be His temples, echoing with hymns of praise, murmuring prayer and fragrant with the incense of propitiation and sacrifice. We must come still closer than temples to the one worshipped. We are to be co-heirs with Christ and, as members of the Church which is His spouse, we are brought into a still more tender relation. We are younger brothers to Him who is our Elder Brother.

Live Christ’s Life

This is not yet enough. We are still too far away. We must by Saint Paul’s teaching live Christ’s life. We are born in Him, live in Him, mount His Cross, go down into His tomb, rise with Him from the grave, follow Him in triumph when He leads captivity captive in His Ascension and reign with Christ, our King, in all ages to come. “As therefore you have received Jesus Christ, walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him.”

Be Christ’s Members

Nor as yet is the heart of Paul satisfied. Relationship with Christ, companionship with Christ will not suffice. He bids us come still closer, to be Christ. You are the members of Christ through which the Blood of His Heart flows. You bear upon your bodies the wounds of Christ, and as you were nailed with Him to the Cross, His hand cleaves to your hand, His Heart reddened the same spear point which now passes into your heart, and you “fill up those things that are wanting in the sufferings of Christ. For you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.”

Reproduce Christ’s Soul

“Whom God foreknew, He also predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son.” “Let us, therefore, bear also the image of the heavenly Adam,” hearkening to the zeal of this Apostle who tells us: “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man.” So then our whole being is to be conquered to Christ and His charity. That conquest, if complete, means to cross continents and brave stormy seas, bringing the different nations of one soul beneath the yoke of Christ. We are to have no thoughts but those of Christ because “we have the mind of Christ.” We are to have no other wishes except His, because we must be “filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” We are to have no other beginning, no other end but Him, living we live for Him, dying we die for Him, wishing “to be dissolved and to be with Christ.”

Christ Liveth In Me

If these sublime lessons were ever realized to their full extent, then it was in the soul of the great Saint Paul, in whom the ambition of conquerors and the enthusiasm of artists and the venturesomeness of explorers and the ardor of martyrs and all the best devotion which can be found in the hearts of men, were united and centered in their utmost intensity upon Christ. When Paul hated, nothing could exceed the fury of his hatred. “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” the voice of Christ cried from Heaven in expostulation. When Paul loved, nothing could surpass the tenderness and passion of his love. There was nothing half-hearted about the great Saint Paul. His own personality had been completely annihilated. The transformation of love was made perfect. The Heart of Christ was in full possession of the heart of Paul. “I live, now not I: but Christ liveth in me.”