November 20, 2008 This is the third article on St. Paul by
Cardinal Egan in connection with the "Pauline Year" announced by
Pope Benedict XVI last June. His name was Paul. He was a Jew;
and in 51 A.D., a scant 15 years after his conversion on the
road to Damascus, he was preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ in
a city called Beroea in the North of what is today Greece. The
Jewish community had invited him to speak in the synagogue; and
numerous converts—both Jewish and pagan—were being made among
the poor and among the powerful and well-to-do as well. The
success in Beroea, however, came to a sudden halt when enemies
of the new faith arrived from Corinth and threatened to throw
the city into turmoil. Thus it was decided that Paul should
travel South to Athens, where, by his own admission, he found
himself terribly lonely and terribly uncomfortable with all that
he saw around him. The Athens of 51 A.D. was not the Athens of
the "Golden Age of Pericles," where giants of philosophy, art,
architecture, poetry and