Archbishop Mark’s podcast series “The Birth of the Church: Why the loser won” comes to a close with Episode 7 charting Paul’s arrival in Rome for the final stages of his extraordinary mission.
Episode 7 – Paul in Rome:
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- Episode 7: Paul in Rome - Transcript
Episode 7: Paul in Rome - Transcript
Author: Archdiocese of Brisbane
So last time we were on the Mediterranean coast of Palestine in Caesarea with Paul languishing in prison. But having appealed to the emperor and having been successful in his appeal, the time has come for Paul to set sail yet again in this career of ceaseless journeying across the Mediterranean and heading to the imperial capital.Now, Paul had always wanted to go to Rome. I said in an earlier podcast that Athens was a highlight, but surely the highlight for Paul, the great missionary and his team was the imperial capital, Rome. Now, it might have been in Paul’s mind that the appeal to Caesar also gave him the opportunity to do what he had long wanted to do, and that is to go and preach the gospel in the imperial capital.
So, we’re told in Acts Chapter 27, it was decided that we should sail for Italy. The weather must have been good, and the boats were ready. So, Paul goes with some other prisoners. And off they sail from Palestine across the Mediterranean, guarded by soldiers who don’t treat him particularly well.
And eventually they strike a big storm, we’re told. And the soldiers who are responsible for the ship, they decide that they have to not only lighten the load that was always done. But that some of these prisoners were part of the problem. So, they could be jettisoned as well. So, Paul faces the prospect of being thrown overboard and never making it to Rome. So much for his appeal.
So, after this dreadful storm or during it really, they are shipwrecked. So that again, the journeying of Paul is plagued with all kinds of difficulties. And he himself says it at the end of 2 Corinthians where he says, you know, I haven’t done this cheaply, my apostolic mission has been incredibly costly for me personally. He says that I have been beaten and three times I’ve been beaten with rods he says, once I was stoned, three times I have been shipwrecked. So, this wasn’t the only time on the way to Rome that Paul was shipwrecked. He’s undergone that before
At day and at night, I’ve been adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from gentiles. Danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters. In toil and hardship through many a sleepless night in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And apart from all the other things, there is the daily anxiety upon me for all the churches.
You listen to that litany of woe and again you ask the question, why did he keep going? Was he a masochist of some kind? But again, Paul would say no. It was all of those things that somehow gave him a power in his mission.
Through that experience of suffering, he was reduced to a kind of powerlessness, that’s true. In imprisonment and so on. But in the midst of his own powerlessness, there was an empowerment. The power of Jesus Christ erupted, as it were, through Paul’s experience of ever deepening powerlessness. And that’s the paradox at the heart of the mystery of Paul.
Because after that litany of woe, he will go on to say, one of the more extraordinary things we find in his letters. When I am weak, then I am strong. Well, if that doesn’t turn the world on its head, I don’t know what does. I mean, the logic of this world is when I am weak, I am ground into the dust. I’ve got to be strong. But Paul says, no. It’s precisely when I am weak, I’ve come to learn. I think he does learn this more and more as the years go by. It’s when I am weak that the strength of another, Jesus Christ crucified and risen, can move through me, erupt through me, as it did through the years of his apostolic mission.
Paul then eventually having been shipwrecked, is washed up on the shore of a little island in the middle of the Pacific that we here in Australia know pretty well because we have many of its former citizens and their descendants living here among us, Malta. And Malta, of course, preserves in the most memorable way the memory of this visit of Paul, albeit not chosen, but washed up on the shores of Malta. And Paul says that he found the Maltese unusually hospitable and friendly. So that that’s a plus.
And then he in Malta, at preparing a fire, he’s bitten by a snake, and everyone then looks at him in horror and thinks, ah finally he’s being punished by God. But of course, Paul doesn’t succumb to the snake bite. He is miraculously preserved as he has been in so many other ways through the course of his story.
So eventually, after enjoying the hospitality of the Maltese and no doubt a few excellent Pastizzi, which they probably would have had in those days too. Paul resumes his journey and comes finally to the coast of Italy, though not yet to Rome. He lands at well, first of all, in Sicily. This is a slow progress. It is a bit like a royal progress, if the truth be told.
Siracusa, as is the city is known Syracuse in Sicily he touches down. Then he moves to the Italian peninsula, and he touches down at Reggio, Reggio Calabria we know it as now. So, Paul touches down in the Reggio. So, Sicily, Calabria and then finally he lands at the place that is now known as Pozzuoli. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Roman name is given Puteoli. But in fact, its modern name is Pozzuoli, and it’s where Sophia Loren was born, I think, or at least grew up. I think she was born in Rome. So, there we are, there’s a connection between Saint Paul and Sophia Loren.
So, he lands at Pozzuoli. And then over land and being greeted by the brothers because he had written ahead. See, the letter to the Romans was Paul writing ahead, in a sense, looking for a bed, at least a welcome.
Romans is his longest and most theologically comprehensive letter. And in some ways, what he’s saying to the Christian community in Rome, which he did not found and which was always strongly Jewish Christian in character. Paul is saying in Romans, I know what you’ve heard, and you might have even read what I wrote to the Galatians. Where I was writing in white-hot anger so, I probably overstated a thing or two in that. But this is really what I meant. So, Romans is a much more reflective, a much calmer letter than something like Galatians. So, he’s writing to the one community he had never met and that he certainly did not found.
So, Paul now comes to meet those whom he has not met until now. And eventually when he comes to the capital for the first time, he’s put under house arrest for about two years we’re told. Tradition has it in Rome that it was on the Aventine Hill, which these days is a rather posh part of the city. And there is a church on the Aventine Hill, which is called the Church of Santa Prisca, and it’s dedicated to the woman who appears in the Pauline story. And a fascinating figure sometimes called Priscilla. So, Prisca or Priscilla, who was married to a man named Aquila, which means Eagle in Latin.
So, Prisca or Priscilla and Aquila were a husband and wife missionary team. And their paths cross and recross Paul’s path through the story. We don’t know a lot about them. But again, tradition in Rome would say that the Church of Santa Prisca is built or stands on the site of the house of Prisca and Aquila. It may not have been a posh part of the city in those days. But, and that Paul was lodged there under house arrest for two years because he would have known Prisca and Aquila. We don’t know for sure, but that’s a long standing and much retaled tradition in the City of Rome.
Evidence would suggest that Paul is eventually released. He says, well, he doesn’t say, but Luke says at the end of Acts. Paul lived there, in this house, two whole years at his own expense. Now, Paul was a tent maker by trade. We’ve seen that. Paul wasn’t rich, couldn’t possibly have been. So, it might have been wealthy benefactors, you know, the Lydia types, and they would have been Roman matrons who were wealthy and Christian. So, Paul almost certainly was bankrolled by the community or the wealthy members of the community. So, we’re told at his own expense. And he welcomed all who came to him. So, he received visitors of every kind preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered.
Now that’s the end of the Acts of the Apostles, which is an extraordinary ending or non-ending. Because why doesn’t Luke go on to tell us the story of Paul’s martyrdom? Didn’t he know about it? Of course he did. So why does he just stop there, preaching and teaching quite openly and unhindered? Because Luke doesn’t want to finish the story, the story of the Pauline mission and the story of the birth of the church. The progress of the Word of God through history, has to continue now. And therefore the story is unfinished precisely because we have to finish the story in our own time and our own place and in our own way.
Looking beyond the biblical texts, there is again, it’s a tradition, but it’s one that I find fascinating. That Paul, having been released after two years under house arrest, eventually fulfills what was clearly another ambition of his. And that was to go to Spain to preach the gospel. In writing to the letter to the Romans, Paul says explicitly that he wants, he has in mind to go to Spain.
Now, it may well have been, but we can’t be certain that at this point, having been released, he does, in fact, go to Spain. There’s, again, a bit of a tradition in the Spanish city of Tarragona that would say that Paul did, in fact, appear there. Well, who knows? But some of these old and tenacious traditions are not just to be rejected out of hand.
So, it may well have been that Paul goes to Spain. And eventually then returns to Rome. And at that point he is finally executed, swept away in the tide of brutality that came with the Neronic persecutions in the wake of the Great Fire of Rome in the mid-sixties. You know the story, or at least the headlines where there was this huge fire that destroyed much of the city of Rome. And there were rumours that the emperor himself had started the fire. And in order to deflect that kind of criticism, Nero decides to pass the blame to a minority who were easily persecuted. And these were, of course, the Christians. And the stories of the martyrdoms are appalling and easy to find.
And in this tide of blood, Peter and Paul were swept away. Again, tradition has it that Peter was executed by crucifixion upside down, they say, in Caligula circus, which is now roughly where St Peter’s Square is. And the obelisk that now stands in the middle of St Peter’s Square would certainly have stood right in the middle of Caligula’s Circus on the other side of the Tiber River. As I say, where St Peter’s Square now stands. And I sometimes think that the last thing Saint Peter would have seen as he hung upside down upon his cross was the obelisk. Originally from Egypt, but the obelisk that stands now in the middle of St Peter’s Square. So that obelisk could tell a story or two.
So, Paul, the story of Paul’s execution is, I think, particularly not only interesting but particularly important. He was beheaded because he was a Roman citizen. And beheading was regarded as a rather quick and merciful way to die. There were much more horrible and shameful ways of dying than having your head chopped off, even though it doesn’t sound too attractive to us.
He was martyred at a place called Tre Fontane, which means three fountains. And I lived quite close to this place when I was a student in Rome and would often enough go down to visit and to pray there. And I found it one of the most evocative places of the many evocative places, of course, in the city of Rome.
Not least for an Australian, because there are many eucalyptus trees on the property. And as an Australian, the look and the smell of eucalypts gives that strange sense of being at home. But for other reasons and deeper reasons and more spiritual reasons. It was a place where I did feel strangely at home. There is a Trappist community there, Trappist monks. But the story of the name of the place is worth recounting. Tre Fontane, the three fountains.
The story is told that when Paul’s head was chopped off, it bounced three times. Now, this sounds ridiculous, but stay tuned. So, the apostolic head severed from the apostolic trunk, bounces three times. Boing, boing, boing. And each time it bounces, up comes a fountain. Hence the name Three Fountains. Now, you might say, well, that story’s absurd. But go gently, because it’s speaking a very important truth about Paul and the story that we’ve been telling through these podcasts.
If we were eyewitnesses at the beheading of Paul, I don’t think we would have seen what the story recounts. But that’s not its point. Its point and its force are more metaphoric, we might call it. By which I mean, the beheading was the last and the greatest of the wounds that Paul suffered. And I read the litany of woes earlier, and this was the ultimate attempt to shut Paul up and to stop Paul and his mission in its tracks.
So, the final solution, we’ve tried everything else. Imprisonment, stoning, beating, shipwreck, you name it. We’ve tried everything it hasn’t worked. It’s only giving him greater impetus, his word, greater power, now we’ll fix him. We’ll chop his head off. And Paul at this point descends to the very depths of powerlessness. His whole career, in one sense as an apostle, had been leading to this moment inevitably. There was a logic to it that was cast iron.
So, the ultimate wound. This is the three, this is why it’s a threefold fountain, a threefold wound. The ultimate wound becomes the ultimate fountain. Springing up around the whole world, even to the round earth’s imagined corner here, down-under. And forever. The attempt at a final solution to shut him up and stop him forever. Only ensured that Paul’s mission has power forever, into eternity. And that his word, the word that he is preaching and teaching, has an eloquence that nothing and no one can stop. Because in the end, it’s the power and the eloquence of the risen Christ himself.
So, Paul becomes Jesus in that sense. It’s an extraordinary claim. And I go back again to those words in Galatians where he says, God was pleased to reveal his son in me. Paul becomes the revelation. And never more so than when he goes to his death. So that this was a death, like the death of Jesus. That wasn’t in any way the end. It was the beginning. And the attempt to stop him only ensured that he will go on forever.
So, Tre Fontane and its story takes us really to the heart of the mystery of Saint Paul. And really answers the question why the loser won. Because he became Jesus. I mean, you look at Paul, such a distinctive personality, but if you look at him long enough and from the right angle, you see Christ, and this make sense of words he speaks himself in his letters. I live now no longer I but Christ lives in me. Christ dies in me too, but then lives in me beyond the death.
And other words of his come to mind. There is only Christ. He is everything, and he is in everything. So many texts of that kind fill his letters. And it’s really the death that gives us the key to understanding what he meant.
At the end of Galatians, he slaps on the desk his ultimate credentials. Because he says, I want no more trouble from anyone. Because I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. And people have read those words and have thought, oh, he must have had the stigmata or something like Saint Francis of Assisi. But no, no. He’s talking about the scars on his body. And Paul would have been brutally scarred by the time he got his head chopped off. When you look at what he went through. He would have had plenty of scars on his body, even to get the lashes five times.
So, he had scars. And what he’s saying is, they’re not my scars. They’re the scars of Jesus that shine like the sun. In other words, defeat became victory. The wound became a fountain. Death became life. Is what he says. So, so many texts that we hear from his letters are illumined ultimately by the meaning of his death.
His body then is taken eventually by the disciples. And is buried not too far away. In what was called Lavinia’s vineyard. Now, again, Lavinia was probably a wealthy Roman woman who had become Christian. She had a vineyard; she was a property owner. So, they buried Paul’s body in Lavinia’s vineyard and eventually a little shrine was built over Paul’s tomb. And the little shrine built over his tomb grew and grew and grew. Until under Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, a mighty basilica was constructed over the tomb of the man from Tarsus. And you walk into St Paul’s Basilica today in Rome. It’s one of the four great basilicas. And it’s got a unique appeal and beauty, I think, and a power. But you are walking into one of the great tombstones of the known world.
Similarly, St Peter’s Basilica is simply a huge tombstone built over the tomb of Saint Peter, who was buried near by the Caligula’s Circus. So, what the great basilicas are articulating is the true meaning, and in the end, the glory of these two very tragic deaths. And from one angle they did look tragic. But from another angle, the angle of Easter, they look to be a triumph of the most remarkable kind.
At that point, we come to, not to an end, but to a point of rest in the telling of the tale of Paul and the birth of the early church. When Paul set forth all those years ago from Tarsus, he could not have imagined that it would end up the way it did. But if you’d tapped him on the shoulder and have said, Paul, just before you go, any regrets?
I think Paul would have said not only are there no regrets, but the one who has freed me from prison and from so much persecution, this is the one who will stand by me now and ensure that my story is told forever and that the gospel that I preached will embrace the entire world.
So, let’s finish this journey of exploration and storytelling by listening to words of Saint Paul himself. Glory be to him, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ever ask or imagine. Glory be to him in the Church and in Christ Jesus from generation to generation. Amen.