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PAUL AND HIS WORLD, First in a series on St. Paul
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Donald Senior, C.P., is President of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, the largest Roman Catholic graduate school of ministry in the United States, where he is also a member of the faculty as Professor of New Testament. Born in Philadelphia in 1940, he is a member of the Passionist Congregation and was ordained a priest in 1967. He received his doctorate in New Testament studies from the University of Louvain in Belgium in 1972.
Fr. Senior is a frequent lecturer and speaker throughout the United States and abroad, and serves on numerous boards and commissions, including the Board of Directors of William H. Sadlier, Inc. In 2001, Pope John Paul II appointed him as a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and he was reappointed in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI.
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PAUL AND HIS WORLD
Paul was born astride two worlds: one, the world of the Roman Empire, the other, the world of Judaism in whose faith and traditions he was steeped. That mixed cultural heritage no doubt helped Paul the faithful Jew ultimately become the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Luke informs us in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul began life in Tarsus (located in south central Turkey today) early in the first century A.D. As Paul tells the Roman commander in Acts (21:39) his hometown was "no mean city." It was, in fact, the capital of the Roman province of Cilicia, a commercial and cultural center noted for its philosophical schools. Greek would have been his native language and he would have been educated in Greek culture and rhetoric and the methods of Greek letter writing, as is clear from his later letters. Paul was a Roman citizen (Acts 16:37-38), an important status that he probably inherited from his father. Paul was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3) and he took pride in his craft and savored the financial independence it afforded him (see 1 Thessalonians 2:9; 1 Corinthians 4:12).
Equally important in understanding Paul was his strong Jewish identity. His own testimony confirms this: "Circumcised on the eighth day, of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew patronage, in observant of the law a Pharisee, in zeal I persecuted the church, in righteousness based on the law I was blameless" (Philippians 3:5-6). In the local synagogue in Tarsus Paul would have studied the Scriptures and their interpretation. Here his soul was nourished with Jewish piety and here his zeal for the traditions of his faith was stoked. Paul unabashedly claimed to be a "Pharisee," an influential lay reform movement that would play a leading role in the survival and spirit of Judaism throughout the first century.
Paul would never lose or reject his cultural and religious background. To it later in his life would be fused his ardent love of Christ, unleashing the dynamic power of Paul's person and history.
WAYS TO IMPLEMENT
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AT HOME
Discussion Point: While we live in a time vastly different from Paul's, we Catholics are a community of diverse cultures. Recent studies, for example, have pointed out that nearly half of all United States Catholics under 29 are of Latino origin. Our faith invites us not to reject that diversity but to embrace it and celebrate it as a sign of the universality of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How have you experienced the richness that cultural diversity brings to the Church?
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