#st. Paul

[apieters]

Interesting. I’ve heard the folks at the Bible Project tell the story this way, and I think that is what the overall arc of the narrative is trying to convey.

I’m also just now seeing that in the New Testament, Paul just says that Abraham was justified in God’s eyes by his faith as a blanket statement, while James points to the Binding of Isaac specifically. If that was the moment that Abraham’s faith finally took on its definitive form, that may solve a lot of the tension that many Christians have when they read Paul and James side by side.

insane for parents to read the story of isaac and abraham to their kids like ok so would you also kill me if god asked you to, dad?

[escapismsworld]

Detail of the monument to Sir George. St Paul and his wife in St Lawrence's Church, Snarford, England, 1613

[austerity-audacity-asceticism]

I am completely and utterly convinced that nothing that St. Paul has ever said goes harder than “For it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

[mudwerks]

Official Opening of UFO Landing Pad, St. Paul, Alberta, 1967

Provincial Archives of Alberta, PA.4272/4

[momentsbeforemass]

NPC’s

(by request)

In the first century, Roman jailers were tortured and put to death if their prisoners escaped.

That’s the backstory to the jailer’s reaction to the earthquake at the jail in today’s first reading.

The foundations of the jail shake, the doors fly open, the chains are pulled loose.

The jailer sees this, assumes that his prisoners (Paul and Silas) have escaped, and prepares to kill himself. Because he knows what they do to jailers.

In that moment of despair, Paul calls out to the jailer, “Do no harm to yourself, we are all here.”

When they could have escaped, Paul and Silas didn’t. Why?

Because Paul and Silas know what they do to jailers.

It would have been so easy for them to run away after the earthquake. Paul and Silas had every reason to do it.

Their friends would have been so happy for them to be free. No one would have given the jailer a second thought.

But Paul and Silas? They knew what running away would mean for the jailer.

So, they stayed. And made sure that the jailer didn’t take his own life.

Why? What makes the jailer so special? All we know about him is his job. In the narrative, he’s part of the scenery, a nameless background character. In gaming terms, he’s an NPC (non-player character).

But that’s not how God sees things. In God’s eyes, there are no nameless background characters.

Paul and Silas are instruments of God’s grace, to be sure. But if we’re only looking at Paul and Silas, then we’ve missed the point of the earthquake at the jail and everything that followed. 

Everything that happened wasn’t done for show, so that people would be impressed with Paul and Silas.

As St. John Chrysostom tells us, it was all done for the jailer – “not for show but for salvation.”

It was all done so that someone who was part of the scenery, a nameless background character to everyone else, might know how much he mattered to God. That to God, “he was worthy of salvation.”

That is how God looks at each one of us.

Because in God’s eyes, there are no NPC’s.

Today’s Readings

[lullabiestoparalyze]

Minnesota governor Tim Walz continues to make big moves towards improving lives of Minnesotans

Minnesota state jobs no longer require a college degree! Folks who couldn't afford to go to college have a whole new range of job opportunities.

Yeah, the weather sucks, but I love being a Minnesotan.

[lionofchaeronea]

St. Paul Shipwrecked on Malta, Laurent de La Hyre, 1630

[onthisdayts]

Speak Now World Tour

June 15, 2011 - St. Paul, Minnesota

[wwyptt]

A finished painting? An end-of-year miracle! Make me a believer, Koraidon Konversion on the Road to Mesagoza Watercolor, 2022

[pathofregeneration]

Make love your aim and then set your heart on spiritual gifts.

— St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 14:1 (KJV)

[eternal-echoes]

[oldshowbiz]

KSTP

[hclib]

That's One Giant Beaver!

Giant beavers as big as bears (6 to 9 feet long, weighing 200-500 pounds) ranged the Mississippi River flats over 15,000 years ago. Picture here, in 1947, is Louis H. Powell, director of the Science Museum of St. Paul, comparing a giant beaver skull dug up on the Mississippi flats, near Hidden Falls park, with the skull of a large modern beaver.

In 2021, the Science Museum of Minnesota nominated a Giant Beaver specimen to be the official state fossil. You can read the campaign online. A bill was introduced in 2022.

Photos from the Minneapolis Newspaper Photograph Collection in the Hennepin County Library Digital Collections. The 1947 newspaper article which featured these photographs incorrectly stated that the fossil was dug up below the Lake Street Bridge, but Hidden Falls Park is in St. Paul.

[jeppiner]

We all have knowledge; yes, that is so, but knowledge gives self-importance - it is love that makes the building grow.

-St Paul, 1st letter to the Corinthians

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. I needed to read this today.

[hrsquotes]

In 1 Timothy 1:19, the Apostle Paul urges Timothy this: "Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked."

You may also recognize Luke 17:33, where Jesus give us a warning about holding on too tightly to our own lives. Here it is in the NLT: "If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it."

If we cling to ourselves, to the ways of this world, we inevitably will lose it. We cannot truly cling to Jesus unless we let go of any unholy, unrighteous things we were holding tightly to. By clinging to Him, we will be lead into a glorious future full of love, joy, peace, & health, & many, many other blessings. It doesn't matter how messed up, cracked, or even broken your past has been. Jesus wants to lead you to a glorious, victorious life. Clinging to Him is a choice we must make daily. His hand is always stretched out offering for us to cling.

[momentsbeforemass]

The best way

Yesterday, someone was feeling guilty.

About how he voted for President.

So he decided to tell me who he voted for (I never would have asked).

And then launched into an impassioned rationalization. At turns both oversimplified and complicated. Of why the way he voted was the best way to defend the Catholic Faith against…

To be honest, I kind of checked out at some point during it all.

Not because I don’t care about him. Or about why he was so troubled over his vote.

But it was all so convoluted. And so external.

As if our Faith depended on things done by the great and the powerful. With slogans and speeches, legislators and lobbyists. Something out there.

That’s not what our Faith depends on. Our Faith depends on things done by God.

Not in electing candidates or enacting laws. But God moving in individual hearts – my friend’s heart, my heart, your heart.

It’s the spirit of today’s first reading. Where St. Paul gives us our priority, to

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”

It’s kind of the opposite of the big show and the big sell. It’s about going small, to draw closer to God.

“Do everything without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like lights in the world,”

It’s almost counter-intuitive. It’s definitely miles away from my friend’s sophisticated hair-splitting and enthusiastic rationalizing, with a side of armchair campaign manager.

But it’s the only strategy that works. The only one that ever changes hearts.

It’s one of those things that becomes more true (if that’s possible) the more you think about it.

The best way to defend the Faith? Actually practice the Faith.

Today's Readings