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“Saul grew up within a world of story and symbol: a single story, awaiting its divinely ordered fulfillment, and a set of symbols that brought that story into focus and enabled Jews to inhabit it. If we are going to understand him, to see who he really was, we have to grasp this and to realize that for him it wasn’t just a set of ideas. It was as basic to his whole existence as the great musical story from Bach to Beethoven to Brahms is to a classically trained musician today. Only more so.”
― Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy
― Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy
“Total consecration to St. Joseph means you make a formal act of filial entrustment to your spiritual father so that he can take care of your spiritual well-being and lead you to God.”
― Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father
― Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father
“BIOGRAPHY, AS WE said before, involves thinking into the minds of people who did not think the same way we do. And history often involves trying to think into the minds of various individuals and groups who, though living at the same time, thought in very different ways from one another as well as from ourselves. Trying to keep track of the swirling currents of thought and action in Paul’s world is that kind of exercise.”
― Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy
― Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy
“The world he had known was full of dark powers. Or, to be more precise, the created order was good, as Genesis had said, but humans had worshipped nongods, pseudogods, “forces” within the natural order, and had thereby handed over to those shadowy beings a power not rightfully theirs. The “forces” had usurped the proper human authority over the world. Evidence was all around. Tarsus, like every ancient non-Jewish city, was full of shrines, full of strange worship, full of human lives misshapen by dehumanizing practices. And Paul believed that on the cross Jesus of Nazareth had defeated the ultimate force of evil. The resurrection proved it. If he had overcome death, it could only be because he had overcome the forces that lead to death, the corrosive power of idolatry and human wickedness.”
― Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy
― Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy
“For Saul, with the vision of Genesis, the Psalms, and Isaiah close to his heart, there would be no question of retreat from the world. If the Stoics had a big integrated vision of a united world, so did he. If the Roman Empire was hoping to create a single society in which everyone would give allegiance to a single Lord, so was he. Paul believed that this had already been accomplished through Israel’s Messiah. If the Platonists were speaking of possible commerce between “heaven” and “earth,” so was he—though his vision was of heaven coming to earth, not of souls escaping earth and going to heaven. As a Jew, he believed that the whole created order was the work of the One God; as a “Messiah man,” he believed that the crucified and risen Jesus had dealt with the evil that corrupts the world and the human race and that he had begun the long-awaited project of new creation, of which the communities of baptized and believing Jesus-followers were the pilot project.”
― Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy
― Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy
Joseph’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Joseph’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
254 books
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144 friends
191 books
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118 friends
1,564 books
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82 friends
419 books
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65 friends
2,969 books
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135 friends
1,282 books
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56 friends
906 books
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257 friends
155 books
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1,335 friends
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