The mission of the Holy Ghost in the world and in the souls of men is the most mysterious operation of God. Of all the mysteries which we shall never fathom until the day of Judgment, this is surely the most inexplicable; how that the Holy Spirit having, after an effort which, the wise ones tell us, extended through a bewildering series of ages, at length brought order out of chaos, should so soon behold His blessed work defaced and ruined by His ungrateful creatures.

 We cannot think that any of those holy Angels who sang the praises of God on the lovely morning of the new creation, and bade God-speed to the human race, as it set out upon its journey down the ages, like some stately ship, could see or apprehend that the all-favored, all-applauded race would immediately swerve from the right and sunny path, into the dark ways and troubled waters, and shatter itself upon the rocks. No eye but the all-seeing eye of Almighty God beheld this dismal, shameful future in store for the children of Adam. We blush for our common nature, when we survey the annals of our race. It was a fit and ominous prelude to the scenes of horror which were to follow, that the very first created man fell from rectitude, and the first-born of woman into the deeper abyss of a brother's hate and murder. With succeeding generations the process of degradation went on with a frightful rapidity. In every department of public and private life, "all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth," and the corruption was most palpable and noisome in the most elevated spheres of human energy.

   But if we look more closely, we will discover that the Blessed Spirit had been ever moving silently over this seething mass of human passions. Throughout this period of gloom and tempestuous lawlessness, God has been constantly in the midst of men, though men knew it not. Indeed God, Whom men strove to drive from their hearts and thoughts and memories, has been all along the Principal Agent, forcing human passions to serve as the blind, unwilling instruments of His sovereign counsels; for it is His sublime prerogative, out of evil to bring forth good.

   If now we survey the world of human kind as it existed at the birth of Christ, we shall find in its condition a very remarkable analogy to the situation of the physical world just previous to the creation of light. All the earth-rending convulsions of ancient history are ended, and the earth lies exhausted, pacified and united at the feet of its imperial master. Unruly barbarians have submitted to the yoke of law, and subjugated provinces circle about the capital of the world, the mighty center of an all-embracing system. Thus the roving atoms, the wandering hordes of savages, have coalesced into organized bodies; and by Divine agency, the ambition of successive conquerors, and the powers of warlike peoples, have been used against their natural disposition, as instruments of harmony and civilization, to prepare the way for the kingdom of light.

   But withal, it was still a hard and cruel world. And when we have said all that can be said for it, there remains so sad a picture that the heart instinctively shudders, a picture of might dominating right, of labor despised, and poverty trampled upon, of slaves without rights, children without moral training, and women without honor or respect. The moral sense was all but dead. Philosophy had lost its power over the multitudes, even if it served to console or guide an unhappy few. Letters were yet a thing of joy, a refuge. But when did learning ever fill the craving of the human soul that is morally weak and unsettled? 

Moral advice never flowed more elegantly than from the lips of Seneca; yet who followed it? He himself as little as anyone else. The Stoics themselves felt that what was wanted was a model, a perfect, just man, in whom every virtue should see mirrored all its possibilities. It was this personality which Christianity offered. It bridged, by the life of Christ, the hopeless gulf between the abstract and the concrete. And then it sent forth universal teachers who lived over again as men, the life of their Divine Teacher, and shed on all sides the aroma of His infinite virtues.

Such a teacher was St. Paul, whose feast we celebrate today.

    1. But no teacher becomes such without preparation. He may be called out of the regular order and his doctrine may be delivered to him from on high. Yet, he is a man, with a mind and a heart. He has behind him infancy, boyhood and youth. There are in him indestructible elements of heredity, racial, mental.

     Thus St. Paul, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, bore all his life traces of his early education. It colored his teaching, his arguments, his language, his similes. He was a Jew of the soundest stock of Israel, Benjamin, "a Hebrew of the Hebrews as touching the law, a Pharisee." He had gone through the primary school of the Jewish quarter of Tarsus, had learned the text and interpretation of the Law.  He had worshipped regularly in the synagogue by the blue and tideless waters that laved the wharfs of his native town. There he read the Scriptures through in a three years' course, commented on them and heard them commented on. In the observance of Sabbath foods, fastings, purifications, none were stricter than Saul of Tarsus. And when he went up between the age of thirteen and sixteen to the advanced school of Gamaliel at Jerusalem, every Pharisee and Scribe, rejoiced, for now a new strength appeared on the horizon, even a youth of destiny.

      Nevertheless in all these years, he had not escape the influence of Greek letters, Greek art, and Greek philosophy. Asia Minor counted numerous cities of Greek origin scattered among the ancient inhabitants of its high valleys and table lands. This was notably so along all the great roads, by sea or by land. And Tarsus was at the juncture of two such roads. In the time of St. Paul, it was even an academic center. Roman law was, doubtless, taught in its schools, for we find in the great Apostle something of Greek culture, and a thorough knowledge of the laws of the empire.

   The soul of Paul, then, must have undergone a remarkable formation. It was filled with the intense religious enthusiasm of youth. It was forced into profound acquaintance with the theology of Judaism. Its fiber was hardened like the finest steel by hourly conflict with self, reasoned contempt of human glory and wisdom, above all by the worship of an ideal Messias of Israel, Who should one day reward him and his for their most painful fidelity of the Law----a Messias Who should come, even now, in splendor, and majesty and power, and inaugurate, in the Holy City, the final reign of the just.

   It was a mighty time, large with the new humanity, one to which all the ages had been looking forward as to their complement, the very fullness of time. It was a turning point in the world's history. The Holy Spirit was silently operating in the hearts of men. The melodious Virgil and the aged Simeon echo the same cry of the yearning human heart. The political world was taking on an entirely new bent and trend, just as the material cover of the earth was finally warped, and swollen, and sunk into its actual state. The agitation of the times developed extraordinary characters, in the mad race for universal dominion.

   But for firmness and tenacity of purpose, as St. John Chrysostom says, clear vision of his scope, and the means to realize it, utter devotion to an espoused cause; for long abiding patience, intense sustained activity, iron will that laughs all obstacles away; for thorough domination over men and situations, and the power to compel the whole army of his workers within the lines laid down by his own personal genius; in a word, for the qualities of a commander, St. Paul is more than equal to any man of his time.

   In St. Paul, character shines out dominant, supreme. And by character I mean the firm habitual disposition to truthfulness, honor, integrity, generosity and a resolute energy of purpose, without which no man ever was or can be a true man. St. Paul was a man rude, and hard and stern, if you will, but certain, self-reliant, and reliable. He sees all things in one clear, strong, unwavering light, a light that so permeates his conscience and floods its remotest corners, that he may not be false to it. This is the man whom the Holy Spirit chose to be the teacher of the Gentile world, to carry the light of the Gospel to the nations.

   This zealous, enthusiastic and devoted young Pharisee was appointed by Theophilus, the high priest, a special commissioner to destroy the Church in Damascus. He left Jerusalem on this errand, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord." It was while on this journey, that the new influence, which was to make him what he is to Christendom, was brought to bear upon his life.

   It was some six days from Jerusalem to Damascus, and Paul had nearly completed his journey. He had traversed the burning plains and uplands of Ituria, and was now in the beautiful valley about a mile and a half from Damascus. The hour was noon, when all is hushed in those southern climes, even to the very birds upon the trees. Suddenly there was a light from Heaven above the brightness of the sun, shining around about St. Paul, and them that journeyed with him. He was stopped in his mad career, and stricken to the earth in penitence and humiliation. His stupefied companions fell to the ground; and Jesus the Master was present to reprove him and convince him of his sin, to change his rage against Him into a burning zeal for His glory, and to send him on the work of His Own ministry and apostleship. He heard the words of Jesus, Whom he had persecuted, and he was obedient to the heavenly vision. He arose from the earth, and sight was gone. God's light had shown the darkness of his soul, and the world of sense was shut out from his view that he might look within and be alone with God. He entered Damascus not at the head of his cavalcade, bent on schemes of violence and persecution, but led by the hand as if he himself were a prisoner, to the house of Judas. There for three days he fasted and prayed; he passed seventy-two hours in silence, in darkness alone with God.

   The shock of the occurrence passed; its meaning, its consequences, its ineffaceable consequences remained and unfolded themselves before his mind's eye. The world was another world to him, life was for another order of existence. He had given his will, his inmost self to the Being Who spoke to him from Heaven. The strength and secret of his new life was this: that he henceforth belonged not to himself but had abandoned himself without reserve to a perfect Holy Will. That was the determining fact of his life. In the train of that act of self surrender all else followed. The old had passed away, all things become new. He was restored to sight at the entrance of Ananias,-----an humble minister of Christ at Damascus-----and was received into the Church by the Sacrament of Baptism.

    It was natural that in the first fervor of conversion St. Paul should wish to make others sharers in his illumination and his joy. He appeared without delay in the synagogues at Damascus. His appearance had been expected as that of the accomplished Pharisee who had been commissioned by the high priest to exterminate the Christian heresy in the ancient Syrian capital. What must have been the blank astonishment of his old co-religionists when he straightway preached in the synagogues that Jesus was the Son of God! What must have been their indignation when the first stupor of surprise had passed! And how great must have been the thankful wonder of the Christians, when their declared enemy, thus publicly and at the immediate peril of his life, owned himself a disciple and a preacher of the faith, which he had so recently persecuted to the death. The highest interests of human life are liable to surprises, but few that ever happened can have rivaled this!

   The life of St. Paul from his Baptism is so well known to us all that it need hardly be dwelt upon here. For over thirty years this extraordinary creature traveled the highways and the by-ways of Greek and Roman antiquity. Through every city and land, even to the ends of the known world, he carried the Gospel of salvation, and zeal unquenchable was the chief characteristic of him who once raged so bitterly against the disciples of the Lord. It is doubtful, if any Roman official was more frequently on the great roads that bounded the principal cities; it is certain that none traveled them more foot-sore, worn and weary, but radiant with faith, and beaming with resolution. It is supposed that excepting our Divine Master and His Blessed Mother no one ever suffered more than he did; for his cup was ever full of care and pain, such as would befit the sacrifice to which he was called. The marks of Christ were in His body, ever exposed to the chain and the scourge. He was crucified with Christ, and was ever as one dead to the world. He did not live, to use his own words, but Christ lived in him.

   It was a time of infinite curiosity, and endless peregrination, this golden age of peace and wealth, but in Paul of Tarsus there is no trace of things that were then and to him minor and insignificant. On every journey, he is the herald of Jesus Christ. Whether he toils among the mountains of Cappadocia, or the plateaus of Galatia, or the swamps of Lycaonia; whether he goes from one Macedonian town to another or crosses the Midland sea to face great Caesar himself, he is everywhere and always teacher, apostle, prophet, founder. In all history, there is no such example of sustained energy and anxiety for the growth of an idea. And if the origins of our holy religion are lowly, and humble and mean, as far as power and wealth and grandeur go, they are grand, sublime, if we reflect upon the men who planted it, the hardships that they bore, the contempt which they lived down, the hatred which they turned into love, the love which they lifted to the enthusiasm of Martyrdom.

   As teacher, as a missionary St. Paul has no equal in the history of humanity. Overflowing with the consciousness that his doctrine is not of man, but of God, he knows no wavering but goes straight to the point at issue----Jesus Christ is God and man. He was crucified and rose again from the dead. In Him our broken, weakened nature was recreated, as it were, and a new love and a new energy added to it. We are again by these mysteries children of the Father now appeased, and brothers of the Son of God Who has atoned through all eternity for the short-comings of human nature; has wiped out the contractual slavery under Satan, and re-opened the narrow but straight path to eternal life, to reunion with the Juridical Head of the race, Jesus Christ, foreshadowed by Adam's original headship and responsibility.

   It is a deep and subtle teaching this. But Paul has seen; it has been revealed unto him, in the blinding light of that dread hour of conversion, in those three years of meditation and communion with God in the Arabian desert. Here God transformed, in the silence and peace of nature, the proud and ardent soul into a vessel of election. Here he rose to a sublime conception of God, of the one true God, as Father of all mankind, all-merciful, all-gracious, and all-kind. He learned that Judaism is not the end of creation, but Christianity was the legitimate and necessary development, completing that unveiling of the Divine Mind that the Jewish Law commenced, and this alone was the reason of the Messias, His kingdom, His triumph and His glory.

In long and tender communings with the Master, Paul rose above all mankind, and took on something of the personal manner and authority of Jesus Christ. His own person sinks away and is lost, he is voice, hand, channel, only an instrument fitted to the Will of Jesus Christ. Faith and love have all but drowned his individual self, he is willing to be anathema, a castaway, a thing of scorn and pity for his brethren, because he is consumed with a burning zeal for their salvation.

2. A holy zeal for the salvation of souls should be the motive power of every act of every priest of God. There opens before us a world not unlike that into which St. Paul went down and came out victorious, a world to be won again for Jesus Christ, by the example of our lives and the victories of the mind, a world as proud and self satisfied as any Rome or Greece, yet gentler, milder, more refined and accessible. And yet, as has been well said, it is far more difficult to convert it to the Christian view of things, for it has once fallen away, and the saving dew of Heaven falls seldom twice on the same pastures. To speak to this world, to be believed by it, we must appropriate something of the spirit and the methods of the Apostle of the Gentiles. We must be filled with the love of God, and the love of man, our hearts on fire with burning zeal for the salvation of souls.

   When we give ourselves and all our strength and energy to the work of saving souls and leading them back to God, their Creator, we are said to have zeal. This virtue is simply indispensable to the priest, and he is constantly reminded of its necessity by everything in him and about him.

   When Jesus Christ sends a workman into His vineyard, He does so that he may cultivate it and make it bring forth fruits of grace and sanctification: "I have appointed you that you should go, and should bring forth fruit, and your fruit should remain." The life of a priest is a life of labor and of suffering; he cannot remain idle and be guiltless. Every name applied to him by the Savior of the world implies toil and hardship. He is called a soldier, because he must battle for the conquest of souls; a fisher of men, because he must put out to sea, and let down his net to rescue those who are drowning in the waves of sin; a harvester, because to gather in the harvest he must courageously bear the burden of the day and the heats; a steward, because he must render a most rigorous account of his stewardship; a pastor, because he must scale mountain and precipice in search of sheep that have gone astray, and bring them back to the fold; he is, as St. Paul says, a debtor to all, to the weak and the strong, to the learned and the ignorant, to the wise and the unwise.

    The priest, therefore, is a man of God, an instrument of the Holy Ghost, charged with whatever pertains to God's honor and glory. He must make God known and loved; he must rescue and bring back to Him the sheep whom the Devil has seized; he cannot save himself alone, because his salvation is inseparably bound up with the salvation of others. If he gives all his strength and energy, if he sacrifices health and devotes his entire life to the work of spreading the kingdom of God and gaining souls, he does no more than his bounden duty, he only discharges a debt and fulfills an imperative obligation.

To spend himself in the sanctification of souls, this is the primary, the most imperative duty of the priest. And this duty should inspire all his actions and guide his every movement. If impelled by faith and charity, he does not use every effort to bring back the erring; if he does not exhort and entreat them, if he does not reprove with mildness or severity as the occasion demands; if he does not teach the ignorant, comfort the sorrowful and encourage the righteous; if he does not lift up pure hands to Heaven to placate the offended justice of God and bring down the dew of Divine mercy upon the people committed to his keeping, if he does not do all this, then he is no pastor, he is not a father, he is but a mercenary, a hireling.

   The most ardent desire of every real priest is, that God should be known, loved and glorified, that all men should be saved. He is ready to make every sacrifice and endure all things to extend the kingdom of God and fill up the number of the elect. This was the habitual disposition of St. Paul, who in his Letter to the Corinthians says: " I will most gladly spend, and myself be spent for your souls." To snatch souls from the devil and restore them to Jesus Christ Who purchased them with His Blood was the one great thought that filled the mind of this Apostle.

     Behold him as he enters Athens. What is it that attracts his attention in that great city? Is it the name and the glory which splendid achievements and the magnificent productions of human genius had done for her? No, he sees only the frightful condition to which her errors had reduced her. His heart was rent within him, and he was seized with a vehement and impetuous desire which he could not resist or control, to rescue that blinded people from the darkness of idolatry and the slavery of their passions. "His spirit was stirred within him." How strong and vivid that expression! We can almost fancy that we see the heart of this man of God all on fire, and his great soul leaping forward to snatch these unfortunate people from eternal perdition: "His spirit was stirred within him, seeing the city wholly given to idolatry."

     Fancy in St. Paul's place the vain and curious Christian drawn to this home of arts. He would love to gaze upon the proud monuments of that celebrated city and to witness the magnificence of its citizens. St. Paul took no notice of these treasures so precious to others, save to deplore the abuses of which they were the instruments. His heart was at once born to God, Who was unknown in that city, and Whom he desired to announce to its citizens. Hence he broke forth into that eloquent and sublime discourse which resounded through the Areopagus and produced such marvelous effects.

  Zeal is the flower of charity, and the enthusiasm of love. Its purpose is to fulfill the eternal designs of God upon men. Who are those men for whose salvation we labor? They are immortal beings, this is their greatness; they are purchased with the Blood of God, this is their worth; they are destined to possess and glorify God forever in Heaven, this is their end. Now, to enable them to secure this glorious end, is not this the grandest, the most sublime work to which mortal man can put his hand and give his life?

   We complain that faith is losing its hold upon the minds of men, and that our labors bear little lasting fruit. If this be so, we ourselves are to blame for it. 

For the Catholic Priesthood possesses the most sublime and most magnificent power that exists on earth. Its origin was the fountain that was opened on Calvary, and there divided into two great streams, the one going back through the patriarchs and the prophets to the first man, and thence to the bosom of God; and the other coming down through tradition and an uninterrupted succession of legitimate pastors to our own day. Its end is the perfection and happiness of the human race in time and eternity. It was instituted to develop whatever is sublime, and noble, and Godlike, in man, to lift him up to God Himself, his Last End, the Completion of his being, and his Supreme Good. The means that it employs are truth, grace and charity.

   A sublime power like this should make easy the conquest of the world. Oh, if we priests only clearly understood and fully appreciated the immense power which our Divine mission confers upon us; if we only had a living faith and abiding trust in Him from Whom we receive our mission; if we only worked with the zeal, charity and disinterestedness of the first Apostles, the whole world would be converted, subdued, and kneel at our feet.

   God grant that we may all become worthy instruments of the Holy Spirit, and that the operation of the Holy Ghost in the world may become, through us, more and more manifest every day. God grant that the number of the disciples of St. Paul may ever increase, and that, under the aegis of his spirit and his faith, there may go forth, from this seminary of St. Paul, a sturdy priesthood, worthy of so sublime a guide and teacher! God grant us an ever larger number of men, men devoted heart and soul to the sacred work of the priesthood, possessed with one purpose, filled with learning, the old and the new, but especially the old, passionately fond of their own age and country, with great hearts and noble souls, sure and clever instincts, enlightened minds and transcendent enthusiasm.

    Mighty deeds remain to be done for Jesus Christ, even the re-conquest of an apostate world. And they can only be done in the uncalculating warrior spirit that sustained St. Paul. Forward, then, with the sword of the Word, and the shield of Faith, all obedient to the same head, all animated with the same spirit; vice and error will flee at our approach, victory will be ours, and the world will be saved. Amen.