Paul wasn’t a follower of the apostles, nor trained by them. Jesus taught him personally, as He did the apostles. In fact, Paul emphasized that he received the same three-year training the apostles did—from Jesus' presence. As one scholar put it, “The Lord from heaven communed with him, as He on earth in the days of His flesh communed with the other apostles.”
Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Galatians 1:13-24
Psalm 139:1b-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15
Luke 10:38-42
The final line in today’s First Reading captures not only the essence of Paul’s letter to the Galatians but the very essence of Paul. He describes himself by his Judaism, with Jewish fervor — a bounty hunter tracking down criminals charged with Christianity — culling a treasonous cult of brainwashed Jews who bought the lie that Jesus was God. Certain they must be cleansed at the root, for they were a caustic transgression, Paul saw the Christians as an incurable infection. They believed the devil in them was the Holy Spirit of God.
It’s no wonder that Paul, depicted in early art, rode a horse, brandished a whip, and galloped from town to town defending the Jewish nation and religion. He was armed with knowledge and a sense of urgency. Paul identified his mindset, “progressed in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my race, since I was even more a zealot for my ancestral traditions.”
Artists envisioned Saul as a Knight and a Roman warrior, fitting for their later eras. Though horses existed, mostly in warfare in Paul’s era, he probably walked everywhere. That is, when he wasn’t on a boat. Paul’s stature didn’t match Sir Gallahad or any other round-table warrior. Yet if he rode a horse, I imagine him as an intense Jimmy Cagney character, cowboy-like, chasing down Christians. After his conversion, Paul lost the whip, but the intensity remained.
Scholars argue that Galatians is one of the earliest New Testament letters, yet it was written upon Paul’s second visit to the Christian Jews in Galatia. By the time he wrote this letter, Paul had at least 15 years of ministry under his belt. His first trip to Galatia took place anywhere from 3 months to a year earlier. Conjectures vary. We hear that at the beginning of this first chapter: “I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by [the] grace [of Christ] for a different gospel (not that there is another). But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ.”
His corrective tone points to the preaching he originally gave the Galatians. The community leaders insisted upon circumcision, holding to Jewish law, ignoring Paul’s teaching that Jesus’ sacrifice settled that. In Acts, Paul had argued the circumcision point with the Apostles back in Jerusalem, and he won that debate. What were the Galatians thinking? Did they question Paul’s authority?
More than any of Jesus’ apostles, Paul is adamant about the authority he received to teach Jesus’ teachings. He called himself an apostle in Galatians’ opening words. “Paul, an apostle not from human beings nor through a human being but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.”
As the notes on the Catholic lectionary readings describe, Paul felt compelled to defend his title as an apostle. Other methods for elevating a disciple didn’t fit Paul. Existing apostles could commission an apostle (Phil 2:25; 2 Cor 8:23), which confers authority. That was not how Paul arose. Prophets too (1 Tm 1:18; 4:14) have authority. But Paul sets aside his anointing as separate, unmerited, and not elected. Paul’s apostleship came directly from Jesus Christ and God the Father, just like the 12.
That defense of his authority — few, if any, other apostles spoke on the subject — includes his conversion history. “I did not immediately consult flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were Apostles before me; rather, I went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus.”
Paul argues that he didn’t sit at the apostles’ feet in Jerusalem—he didn’t immediately consult flesh and blood. He wasn’t in Jerusalem at all during his apostolic training. Instead, he received three years of formation off campus, outside of Christianity’s headquarters in Jerusalem. Paul witnessed Jesus’ teaching firsthand.
The word “immediately” shows that Paul later joined the apostles, met with them, and grew together in Christ. His ministry to Gentiles set him apart, pulling at the strings that tied the other apostles to Jerusalem.
After his violent and blinding encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul was led to Ananias, who laid hands on him, baptizing him. Ananias said to Paul, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9:17).
Paul wasn’t an apostle's disciple who was then trained like the apostles. Jesus taught Paul personally, a similarly lengthy encounter in Christian leadership. Paul emphasized that he received the same three-year training the apostles did—by being in Jesus’ presence. As one scholar put it, “The Lord from heaven communed with him, as He on earth in the days of His flesh communed with the other apostles.”
Paul added further evidence of his evangelistic work before meeting the apostles. “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas and remained with him for fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the Apostles, only James the brother of the Lord.”
Cephas is Peter. Paul calls him by his Hebrew name, a homage to Jesus’ words used when he called Simon “rock.” Paul was Saul’s Roman name. Saul is Hebrew, like Cephas. Church tradition identifies the apostle James, “the brother of the Lord,” as the son of Alpheus and Mary. James mother, also named Mary, is the Virgin Mary’s sister.1 James, called the brother of the Lord, is, then, Jesus’ cousin. Another apostle named James, by the way, was Jude’s brother; both were sons of Zebedee.
Paul’s argument that he spent only 15 days with the apostles and met only two of them matters not for his transformation or conversion. The two weeks with the big boss, Peter, followed by a handshake and a sit-down with James, Jesus’ close relative through his aunt Mary, identified his status. The James that Paul met had stature; he headed the church in Jerusalem. For context, James was the first apostle to be martyred, killed by the scribes and Pharisees.
Peter and James had strong credentials. But the two did not grant Paul apostolic authority. He conferred with the apostles, but was a man among equals. Paul did not credit himself in any of this defense of his authority. He did not seek to exalt himself. He grounded his claim in God’s orchestration, a formation that preceded even his birth. Ananias represented the older method of anointing Paul, a person God had chosen specifically.
“But when [God], who from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles.”
We should not dismiss the historical and spiritual importance of Paul’s authority, framed in the term “an apostle.” This authority applies to all the apostles. These men were not only champions of Christianity, but also founders of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth. They were like the prophets, priests, and kings of the ancient Hebrews, anointed with direct channels to God.
Consider that the Old Testament prophets spanned millennia, with usually only one or two alive at a time. The apostles of Jesus lived within the same two to five decades after Jesus’ Ascension. They all enjoyed the special indwelling of apostolic honor.
We must listen to them. They are the roots of our current Magisterium, an unbroken core of holy men beholden to God, driven by the Holy Spirit, and not only representatives of Peter in the papal vestige, but active recipients and stewards of revelation. Paul represents this unification of apostolic recognition under one mantle—Jesus Christ.
Paul’s final words in our reading, the last verse in Chapter One, explain that significance. “So they glorified God because of me.” Because of what God did with him, what God expected of him, and what he delivered as his mission to God. Both witness and testimony mark holiness.
Galatians was written between 50 and 53 AD, only 20 years after Jesus’s death and resurrection. It includes the full breadth of Church doctrine. In 67 AD, Paul penned his final letter, in 2nd Timothy. As with his apostleship title in Galatians, Paul began 2 Timothy similarly. “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God for the promise of life in Christ Jesus.”
Paul wrote that “the Lord stood with me and strengthened me” (2 Timothy 4:16-17). He wrote with certainty that he “fought the good fight” and, beyond a charge of narcissism and hubris, Paul admitted that a “crown of righteousness” was put on his head (verses 7-8).
He could say boldly, “So they glorified God because of me.”
Fun contentious fact. See Catholic Answers for more on James.