Reflections on a Pauline Pilgrimage to Turkey [1]
Tarsus and The Spirit of St Paul
“For to me, to live is Christ!” [Philippians 1:21]
St Paul outside St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City
We had to come to Tarsus, the birthplace of St Paul!
Our group of 39 took off from Singapore on Easter Tuesday, the effect of the intense schedule of church and liturgies of the Holy Week still lingering on our minds. Confining our sojourn within Turkey, the shorthand reference for the trip was “A Pauline Pilgrimage to Turkey”, but in reality the itinerary served ample notice that it would be Pauline, Marian and Johannine all at once in view of the inclusion of Pauline sites, Ephesus and the rest of the Seven Churches of Revelation.
Mercifully, experience and wisdom prevailed upon our travel agent to arrange for us to fly, after a brief transit, from Istanbul in the far northwest of Turkey to Adana in its far south, next to the Syrian border. Istanbul is not in the Middle East; it is actually on the European continent. It is far, very far, in fact some eleven plus hours away flying westwards against some winds. [Returning eastwards took an hour less, assisted by tail winds we guess.] After an overnight flight from Singapore, we were grateful to be spared an immediate long distance coach-ride to wherever. From Adana to Antioch (formerly Syrian Antioch, now Antakya and part of Turkey), it was a short, pleasant and leisurely drive.
It is simply great to start at Antioch, the very city where St Paul began his mission in a big way. Antioch enjoys the singular distinction in Christian history as the Mother Church of Gentile Christianity to which Paul’s name is inextricably linked.
To retrace that history, it is best to begin at chapter eleven of the Acts of the Apostles (11:19-26), where St Luke gives us a glimpse of the close link between the martyrdom of Stephen and the bursting forth of a groundbreaking new community of believers in Antioch. As the blood of martyrs always does, the courageous sacrifice of St Stephen sowed the seed for a glorious new crop. As the persecution intensified over the martyrdom of Stephen, believers in Jesus of Nazareth fled Jerusalem and scattered all over the surrounding area. This forced dispersion saw the disciples crossing mountains and sailing seas in every which direction, reaching places like Phoenicia, Cyprus and the Syrian Antioch around 37 AD.
The first Christian believers, we recall, were all Jews. Initially, when they tried to spread the word, they did so only among fellow Jews. But men from Cyrene and Cyprus went to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks as well, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus and a great number that believed turned to the Lord. When news of this wave of conversion from amongst the Gentiles reached the church in Jerusalem, Barnabas was sent over to review the situation and he was excited by the grace of God working there.
“Full of the Holy Spirit and of faith,” as St Luke describes him, Barnabas knew at once that he needed to get someone capable to work with him in this rich harvest field. He went to Tarsus to look for Paul and brought him to Antioch. They stayed for one whole year and instructed a very considerable number of people.
Why did Barnabas choose Paul?
Why did Barnabas at once think of Paul? Barnabas knew that to do that crucial work of mission, evangelisation and faith-formation in Antioch, he needed someone with triple pre-requisites:
- A man of dual essential background: a Jew steeped in the Jewish tradition who had also been exposed to the philosophy of the Greeks and could meet the intellectual demands of the Gentiles;
- A man of courage, for the melting pot of an affluent Roman Antiochene society demanded much resolve from a Christian leader;
- A man skilled in rhetoric and argumentation, for the scrutiny by Jews and Gentiles alike would be equally fierce and unrelenting.
He immediately thought of Paul. He knew that Paul had those qualities. He knew that Paul’s conversion was real. He knew about Paul’s zeal. And here is the thing: he whom Luke describes as being “full of the Holy Spirit and of faith” knew that Paul has the Spirit of Christ in him. Indeed, recall this crucial piece of autobiographical remark when Paul later wrote to the Philippians: “Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ” [3:8]. Now that, in our view, is the single most crucial spiritual qualification about Paul that prompted Barnabas to think of him immediately as the candidate to recruit for this urgent work in Antioch.
So Barnabas knew about Paul’s greatness before anyone else. After his conversion, Paul went to Jerusalem anxious to testify to his faith, but the Apostles were afraid of him. Who could believe that so fierce a persecutor just recently had now become a friend? But Barnabas vouched for the reality of Paul’s conversion, and brought him into personal touch with the Apostles. Meanwhile, the other Jews considered Paul hateful not only as a Christian, but as a turn-coat for whom no punishment would be too severe. Fearing for Paul’s life, the Apostles persuaded him to leave Jerusalem which he did, taking a ship from the port of Caesarea and sailed for his native Tarsus.
It is easy enough to recall the broad outline of Paul’s life. As a young man, he was attracted to the zealous Pharisees. They represented all that was good in Judaism, doggedly striving to preserve the Jewish heritage and identity. Paul the young man found meaning in directing all his energy to the Pharisaic cause and his conviction naturally led him to persecute the church. But God, who had other plans for him, reached out, touched him, and redirected his energies. Once Jesus Christ has been revealed to him, Paul saw reality in a whole new way and he never looked back. But, it is not always realized how long a time elapsed since Paul “disappeared” to Tarsus. From the time he left Jerusalem to the time he reappeared in Antioch as a Christian teacher in 43AD, a silence of some ten years had shrouded Paul’s life history. Precious little, if any, is known about him during those long years. It is quite remarkable that a man of Paul’s burning zeal could stay so completely under the radar for so long. However, judging from the incredible amount of work that Paul did for God after that period of silence, one cannot but agree with H. V. Morton that Paul’s silent-years must have been a period of fruitful preparation for his life’s work and that during them he grew in spiritual grace.
What we do know, as a fact, is that those ten or so years were an important fermenting time in the history of Christianity. Churches in Jerusalem and Antioch were under two increasingly compelling forces moving the incipient church towards separating herself from the synagogue. First, there was the external force of expulsion exerted by the synagogue that sought to flush out Jesus-believers from the Jewish community. Second, there was the growing internal conviction of a distinct Christian identity within the faith community that gradually grew into a need to make a clean break from its Jewish anchorage. Only a successful liberation from the synagogue could result in the spread of Christianity throughout the world, away from an exclusive Jewish focus and in favour of the Gentiles. St Luke makes it clear that in baptizing Cornelius the Roman centurion and his household [see Acts 10], St Peter cooperated with the Holy Spirit and admitted the first Gentile into the Jesus movement, thus anticipating the work of St Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles.
Finding Paul in Tarsus
So Barnabas thought of Paul as the man for the job and he went to Tarsus in search of him. He took a ship at Seleucia, the port of Antioch, and sailed to the opposite coast of the Roman province of Cilicia of which Tarsus was the capital. In those few words “and when he had found him”, we gather from Luke that Barnabas did not locate Paul in his house but had to look around for him in Tarsus.
Pilgrims today are brought to see three Pauline sites in Tarsus.
First, is St Paul’s Well. This is a very old stone well, probably of Roman construction, said to stand on the site of Saint Paul’s family home and is accordingly called Saint Paul’s Well. There is no evidence to believe that it has anything to do with the Apostle Paul, but Tarsus is important for Christian heritage, and visitors often choose to believe that the water from the well has healing power.
Second, is St Paul’s house. St. Paul’s Well sits in a courtyard long believed to be the site of St. Paul’s house. Archaeological studies have shown the whole surrounding areas to bear evidence of cultural heritage from the Roman, Byzantium and Ottoman periods. As pilgrims and admirers of Paul, who have been drinking from his spiritual well, we spent quiet moments at this archaeological site and, from the depth of our hearts, lifted up a singular prayer – that we be blessed, too, with the spirit of St Paul. It was our first emotional moment on the trip, knowing full well what that spirit entailed! A spiritual pilgrimage being our depth desire, we wanted to surrender to God our time on this sojourn, in the sure hope that while the journey would inevitably see us behaving like tourists – eating and shopping and sight-seeing – we would be touched by the spirit of St Paul as well.
[1 & 2] The archeological site of St Paul’s house under glass, right next to St Paul’s Well. Pictures © Teresa Sim. [3] St Paul’s Church in Tarsus dates from the 18th century. Third, is the Church of St Paul, now a museum where we were supposed to celebrate Mass. Unfortunately, the church was closed for renovation during our visit.
The Spirit of St Paul
The former Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple once said, “A man’s spirit is not known by his opinion, but by his action and general conduct.” To the Philippians, Paul wrote: “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me” [1:21-22].
Through hard and tedious labour, but clearly Spirit-inspired work, St. Paul gave the Church a priceless heritage. Thirteen of the twenty-one New Testament Epistles are traditionally attributed to him. Imagine how impoverished Christianity would be without them. Written well before the four Gospels, his letters present us with insights into the first Christian communities. And yet, in the twenty-first century, they continue to resonate clearly as insightful descriptions of what it means to live as disciples of the Lord Jesus and as a faith community – transparent and accountable! It is him who gives us the indispensable theological concept of many parts yet one Body in Christ (1 Cor 12; Romans 12). It is him who continues to inspire us with a powerful definition of the virtue of agape (1 Cor 13). And it is him who gives us the first written description of the Last Supper (1 Cor 11) and challenges us on the proper celebration of the Eucharist. On myriad issues of the life and mission of the followers of Christ and the churches the apostles left behind, Paul’s spirit lingers on, prompting, probing, challenging, and haunting our conscience – to be ignored only if we would be rebels, rather than obedient servants, of the Word.
If we have to single out one manifestation of the spirit of St Paul that most impresses us, it is the indomitable spirit for all seasons and all circumstances that came in the wake of his conversion. Lists of apostolic woes – beatings and imprisonments, shipwrecks and hunger, hardship and disappointment, opposition and rejection, and dangers from false friends …. [see, for example, 2 Cor 11:4-5, 26-29] – seen against a backdrop of his immense work, fighting the good fight to the very end, finishing the race, keeping the faith (2 Tim 4:7) …, point our attention to one thing. That is, because his conversion was real, as Barnabas has intimately understood, Paul’s spirit enabled him to adjust to any and every circumstance, however adverse, while he pressed on with what Christ has called him to do. The singularity of his sense of vocation, regardless of power, position and profit – the three P’s the rest of the world as well as the church might hold dear, but which he considered as “garbage” in view of his conversion to Christ – is what has captured our quiet, but deep, admiration.
Reflections on St Paul are, from our perspective, most fecund when we are able to feel deeply the groundedness of all his messages. Then, we are better able to appreciate the real humanity of this towering figure from the early inception of the Jesus-movement, without whom Christianity would simply not be the same, and to renew our wonderment of how he lived and worked in the magic of divine grace.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, June, 2011. All rights reserved.
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