Following his conversion, Paul obviously had his own equivalent of the transfiguration experience witnessed by the three apostles. Paul encountered the risen Christ who manifested himself to Paul on the road to Damascus. This experience, like that on Mount Tabor, included light and a voice. In Paul’s case, the light was blinding and left him incapacitated. With the prayer of Ananias, Paul’s sight was restored, but the eyes of his mind and heart had experienced a transformation/transfiguration. He now knew Jesus Christ in a completely new way. In fact, a process had begun which enabled Paul to know and understand Jesus in a way that continued to grow, expanding Paul’s perception of the deep mystery of Jesus and at the same time transforming his own life in growing holiness.

For Paul, as for the other apostles, this growing understanding of the mystery of Christ was a function of a re-reading of the Old Testament. Paul himself tells about this in his second letter to the Corinthians. He talks about the difference between the Jews reading the Scriptures (Old Testament) and the way that those who have begun to know the truth about Jesus read the Scriptures.
‘Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendour. But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed. … And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’
(2 Cor. 3:12-18)

So how did Paul come to understand Christ as he looked with new eyes at the Scriptures? Three or four letters of St Paul can illustrate this for us – Romans 1:1-4; Philippians 2:6-11; Colossians 1:15-20; Ephesians 1:3-23. I have listed them according to the order of their composition.

Paul’s starting point was his personal encounter with the Risen Christ. Immediately following this he came to know the facts of Jesus’ earthly life through his contact with the other apostles. He would have learned from them the way that Jesus himself interpreted and explained the Scriptures (Old Testament) with reference to himself – for example, to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. This led Paul, in the first place, to express his understanding of the gospel and of Christ in three phases. First of all, Jesus Christ was a descendant of David according to the flesh. Jesus’ life was rooted in the history of Israel both in the sense that he was a Jew himself, but also in the sense that the history of the Jewish people was filled with the promise of Christ. In other words, in a real but hidden way Christ was a presence in the history of Israel even before his birth of Mary, which actually marked the second phase. The third phase, which was, in fact, Paul’s starting point, began when he was ‘designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom. 1:4). The person of Jesus Christ, therefore, is seen to span the whole of salvation history – the time of the Old Testament, his earthly life and now the time of the Church, the Body of which Christ is the Head, and in which Christ is present as Lord.

It is this understanding of Christ that unites the Old and New Testaments and explains why we continue to venerate the Old Testament and read it in the Liturgy (especially at Sunday Mass, Daily Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours). We contemplate the face of Christ hidden in the words and events of the Old Testament, manifested in the words and events of Christ’s earthly life in the Gospels, and celebrated in his sacramental presence as Lord in the life and liturgy of the Church.

But Paul’s understanding of Jesus Christ was to expand even further beyond the boundaries of history. The next two texts (Phil. 2:6-11 and Col. 1:15-20) describe the reality of Christ in terms of his divine origin (‘the form of God’ – Phil. 2:6, and ‘the image of the invisible God’ – Col. 1:15) and his relationship with humanity (‘that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ – Phil. 2:10-11). The final expansion sees Jesus in relation to all of created reality (‘all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together’ – Col. 1:16-17).

In the letter to the Colossians Paul has attained a truly cosmic vision of Christ – seeing him not only as the centre and meaning of history, but also of creation and all existing reality. There is a certain parallel here with the development of the Old Testament faith in God, which itself expanded from the historical experience of God’s intervention in the events of Israel’s history to the realization that their God was the Creator and origin of all that is. Paul was able to see that the person of Christ, the Son of God, is only fully appreciated as being always present with God from the beginning and central in the work of creation and the plan of salvation.

Although Paul’s vision of Jesus Christ has this wonderful cosmic breadth, nevertheless, Paul constantly returns to the central and historical events of Jesus’ death and resurrection. All of these texts and many others in the letters of St Paul keep us rooted in what we call the Paschal Mystery of Christ. While the person of Christ is the point of unity with God, with all of humanity and the whole of creation, it is the obedience of Christ in his sacrificial death and the Father’s response in raising his Son from the dead that is the focal point. Christ’s death and resurrection is the point of salvation and of recapitulation and reconciliation of everything and everyone with God. These events are also the point of entry for each one of us individually into a relationship with Christ and incorporation into God’s plan for creation and the human race. This incorporation comes about through faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection and through becoming one with him in his Body – the Church. Our final text – Ephesians 1:3-23 – brings together in a hymn of praise all of the various elements that we have looked at in this brief article. Do take a few moments to dwell on these texts and reflect on the wonderful grasp of the mystery of Christ that was granted to St Paul so that our minds may also expand and be filled with awe and wonder, and with deepened faith in Jesus.

During Advent and as we approach the celebration of Christmas once again, we are ever grateful to St Paul for the way that he became an instrument of the Holy Spirit in revealing the riches of the mystery of Jesus Christ. With Paul our knees will also bend and our tongues will confess the name of Jesus, to the glory of the Father.

This article was written by
Monsignor Paul J. Watson, Director of Maryvale Institute, Birmingham.