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Listening to Christ and Communicating Him
in the Footsteps of Paul
 Let us examine how Paul welcomes and listens to the Word
of God and becomes a genuine communicator of that Word. Our reflection
will necessarily be very condensed. In particular, we will focus our attention
on Paul's change of attitude: from Saul, the Pharisee deeply attached
to the Law which he scrupulously observed and forced others to observe,
to Paul, the Christian who finds his identity in Jesus and freely communicates
him to others with his entire being. We can outline Paul's relationship
with the Word as follows:
a) For Saul the Pharisee, the Word of God is the Torah,
that is, the Pentateuch, but also all the other books of the Old Testament.
Saul studies the Torah, explains it, loves it and observes it down to
the last detail. he identifies himself with it: My life is the Law.
b) Converted to Christ, Paul re-reads the Scriptures (the
Old Testament, which is the Word of God) from the Christian perspective
of directing his life to Christ and announcing to others the salvation
realized by Jesus.
c) Having come to understand the Scriptures in the light
of Christ, Paul supplements them with his own communication of Christ
to others (his preaching and writings), which come to be considered a
part of the Scriptures. As a Christian, Paul lives entirely for and with
Christ, following in his footsteps, and thus his life is transformed into
Scripture: it becomes the word of God.
My Life is the Law
During the time in which Paul lived, the Word of God was
the part of the Bible that Christians today call the Old Testament. it
was composed of the Law, the Prophets and their writings. The core of
teh OT was the torah, which Saul the Pharisee loved with all-consuming
passion. In fact, the phrase which best defines him at this stage of
his
life could be: "My life is the Law." Saul succeeded in living the Law
so perfectly that he was able to boast of this fact, without fear of being
contradicted. He truly observed the Law, which no one really believed
could be practiced completely, and no one could find anything to correct
in his behavior (cf. Gal. 1:13-14; Phil. 3:3-6).
Focused on the Law
Saul learned the Law of God as a child. For fifteen years,
he sat at the feet of Gamaliel, studying the Scriptures, hanging on every
word of his teacher and making the effort to observe every aspect of the
Law, down to the last detail (cf. Acts 22:1-4).
In the school of Gamaliel, Saul learned to interpret the
Law and to also embrace the fundamental nucleus that constitutes the
framework of life for the religious Hebrew. This nucleus is Dt. 6:4-9: "Listen,
Israel" (cf. Dt. 11:13-21; Nm. 15:37-41). The Jewish and Christian religions
are not "religions of the Book" but "religions of teh Word." Life is more
important than "book," and that life is made up of listening and response.
In short, it is made up of relationships. Thus, history is more important
than the book that describes it. The believer listens to the God who speaks
and communicates his will so as to carry out that will faithfully. One
who listens to God in a spirit of obedience will attain life in all its
fullness. Through the recitation of the "Shema" every morning and evening,
the Jewish believer unified his/her existence in obedience to God--the
One God who had freed Israel from slavery.
The illusion of listening to God and of being in profound
communion with him
"Listen, Israel," is the basic attitude that distinguishes
the true believer from non-believers. The latter seek to enter into relationship
with a divinity that does not have eyes or mouth or ears (cf. Ps. 115).
Our God, instead, sees, listens, speaks, questions and journeys with us.
In the Jewish religious experience, the desire to listen to God so as
to obey him reached the point of exaggerated interpretations of the divine
will, above all on the part of the Pharisees, who claimed that the "listening" demanded
by the word of God could be satisfied by listening to the Pharisees;
opinions and rejecting anything that differed with those opinions.
The basic error of this attitude is the fact that it implies
that God needs our human activities. On a concrete level, this error
led the Pharisees to reflect on God (=deliver sermons and develop theories)
and to think "in place of God," setting themselves up as judges and arbitrators
of good and evil. Consequently, instead of listening to God and following
God, they Pharisees followed their own ideas about God and imposed these
ideas on the rest of the people. In such a situation, a person looks
but
doesn't see (or sees incorrectly); listens but doesn't grasp the message
being delivered (=doesn't hear); speaks but doesn't communicate (=does
not respond correctly because the question was not understood), and moves
ahead without knowing the goal he/she is aiming at. Because Saul wanted
to understand the Law and live it, he became a Pharisee. But in spite
of his longing for God, Saul was not successful in his efforts to enter
into communication with the Divine because the relationship he was trying
to establish was clouded by human reasoning.
(By Sr. Filippa Castronovo, FSP; International Encounter
on Jesus Master, WTL, 1998).
At the Center: Jesus
Master | Prayer to Jesus Master | Why
St. Paul | Getting to Know Paul the Apostle
Mary, as Mother, Teacher and Queen | Apostolic
Spirituality and Holiness | Communicating
Christ
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