10. Prayer to St Paul

St Paul, great Paul:

one of the great apostles of God.

You followed after all the rest in time,

but you surpassed them in labours and in effect

in the husbandry of God.

While you were still weighed down by the flesh

you were rapt ‘even to the third heaven’,

and heard ‘things that cannot be said by men’.

Among Christians you were like a nurse

who not only cared for her sons,

but in some way brought them forth a second time,

with careful and marvellous tenderness.

You were ‘made all things to all men’

so that ‘you might gain all’.

Sir, you are known to the world

by these and many other words and deeds

to be of great power before God

and of immense pity towards men:

to you I come, certainly a very great sinner

and greatly accused before God,

the powerful and strict judge.

Not by one, nor by a few am I accused,

but by innumerable offences;

not by small ones, but by those that are very great;

not in doubt, but quite certainly;

not by a short accusation, but by one that is long as life,

not by one accuser, but by as many as know my sins.

For the judge himself is my stern accuser

and I am clearly a sinner against him.

Moreover all spirits, good and evil, accuse me

in the presence of God.

The good because they owe justice to God;

the evil because they serve my injustice.

The good, because they bear witness

to the truth that they look to;

the evil, because they seek my punishment

which they look for.

They both judge my iniquity in this,

because they know that according to justice

I deserve to be damned.

Alas, how many judges, how many accusers

over one miserable man!

Alas, how hard they are on a fool,

how closely they look into what is manifest.

Alas, who will make excuse for him whom God accuses?

Or which one will be an intercessor for him,

if all are his accusers and judges?

But even more since I know my guilt,

I will be my own accuser and judge.

For I confess that I have sinned more than enough

and therefore deserve a heavy condemnation.

Even that which is irrational and insensible condemns me,

if I am not insensitive.

For I understand that I ought to blush

before the face of all creatures,

for I have sinned against him

who had the power to make them

and the goodness to will to do so.

And I am condemned by myself, too,

for I also was made by him.

Alas, whence have so many and so great evils poured in,

that so rush down upon a wretch?

My evil sins, it is from you that all these ills flow into me.

You encourage those who would make accusation;

You discourage those that would make excuse.

You lead on the ones who condemn;

you shut out those who intercede.

You call forth vengeance;

you turn away pardon.

You lead me on by your enticements to fear and confusion;

you tear away from me hope and consolation;

you push me on to eternal ruin;

you keep away from me all help;

and to increase my wretched state

you add this crowning unhappiness –

that while it is all true, yet it does not seem so to me.

In fact, if I did see the reality

I should not feel it or be moved by it.

Reason teaches this, but my heart does not grieve.

I see this because it is so,

and alas that I do not dissolve entirely in tears

because it is so.

If only I could do that, perhaps I might hope;

hoping, I might pray;

praying, I might obtain.

When truly, because of my wretchedness,

feeling and grief are not in me,

how can I hope?

Without hope, how can I pray?

And without prayer, what can I obtain?

Unhappy little man that I am!

What has become of my prayer?

Where have my hope and faith vanished to?

I began to pray with the hope of rashness,

and despair soon made me understand

the truth of my state;

my prayer itself slackened

because I could not hope in the goodness of anyone.

For if whatever is just is against me,

100

whose goodness is with me?

If all things that are right are turned against me,

who in pity will turn towards me?

If Creator and creatures rightly look down on me,

who will turn his gaze towards me?

105

Unhappy sinner, if this is so, nothing is left to you

except to be inert about hope and silent about prayer,

and thus always to lie down in your misery.

Since of your own accord you have made yourself wretched,

in justice it is right that you should always be wretched.

110

Is it thus, unhappy sins, that you keep your promises?

When you drew me on, you promised sweetness;

when it was done, and I was in your power,

you filled me with bitterness.

When you were persuading, you were gentle with me;

115

when you had persuaded, you stabbed my soul to death.

When you called me into your trap you showed me

that it was easy to get out by the grief of penitence;

in fact, when I rushed in headlong I fell and was buried.

Buried, I was blinded; blinded, I was hardened;

120

when I was hardened, all ways out were closed against me.

And thus, the wretch you have deceived and captured

you make fast in despair,

to be silent and lie insensible,

as if lost to God and forgetting God,

125

until he is sold to the merchants of hell,

who collect their merchandise in the lake of death.

All this you have done to me;

I am expert in all these matters,

even if I am not yet handed over to those merchants.

130

That is both what I expect at last in my miserable fear

and what they wait for with wicked delight.

Alas, how evil it is to despair and to be silent like this;

and alas, how vain it is to cry out without hope,

to strive without hope.

135

God, whose goodness is not exhausted,

whose mercy is not emptied out,

whose knowledge does not fail,

whose power can effect what you will;

whence shall I ever be able to get back life,

140

who have thus been driven desperate by my sins?

For if you are angry against sinners,

at least, kind Lord, you are accustomed to give counsel

to those who plead with you.

Teach me, O Lord, whence I ought to hope,

145

so that I can pray.

For I long to pray to you;

but I neither know how because of my ignorance,

nor am I able to because of my hardness.

And I am forbidden to do it by despair because of my sins.

150

I seek for something that will excuse me,

and there is nothing that does not accuse me.

I seek for someone who will pray for me,

and I find whatever exists is against me.

I seek for someone to have mercy upon a wretch,

155

and all that has being opposes the wretch.

Jesus, good Lord,

why did you come down from heaven,

what did you do in the world,

to what end did you give yourself over to death,

160

unless it was that you might save sinners?

St Paul, what did you teach

when you were passing through the world?

God, and his apostles, and you most of all,

invite us sinners to faith;

165

you show us this as our only safe refuge.

How then should I not hope, if I believe this,

and ask in this faith?

How can this hope be frustrated in me,

if that faith does not fail me

170

from which it was born?

Jesus, God, and you his apostle,

I, a sinner, believe in this faith by your command;

on this I throw myself;

indeed I have already thrown myself.

175

Thus clothed I have access to you when I pray.

In this faith I ask, I seek, I knock,

that you may both have mercy upon a sinner,

that you, Lord, may spare, and you, Paul, may intercede;

you save and you pray.

180

Before you both I wrap myself in this faith,

so that I may be hidden

from those who would search out my sins

and exact their deserts,

and from your buffeting, O God, my stern judge.

185

A sinner asks by your counsel to be concealed;

I beg you, do not reveal him, by your justice,

to damnation.

But alas, I fall into yet another heavy ill.

I thought to get hope through faith,

190

and lo, I see that I have no hold upon faith.

I had thought myself to be clothed in this faith,

and I know myself to be without it.

I was confident that I was concealed in it,

and I know myself to be far from it.

195

For ‘faith without works is dead’;

in truth, dead faith is not faith.

He then who has dead faith has no faith.

Alas, the fertility of evil works forbids me to have hope;

and sterility of good works proves me to be without faith.

200

Alas, the evil I have done!

Alas, the good I have neglected to do!

For if it is necessary that by evil works

God should be displeased;

then it is impossible without faith,

205

which counts for nothing without good works,

to please God.

But if ‘the just man lives by faith’,

whoever has no faith is dead.

But those who are sterile in good are dead;

210

then how much more dead are those who are fertile in evil?

For if ‘the tree that does not bear good fruit’

is cut down, as being withered;

that which bears bad fruit will even more

be rooted up as evil.

215

For this is death, not of the flesh, but of the soul.

How great and how much worse it is to die that death

than to die the death of the flesh.

For at the last all who die in human flesh rise again;

but all who die in the spirit rise not.

220

And that death destroys more by taking away a life

that perhaps can never be restored

than when it takes away life because necessity demands it.

It is worse to cease from a life of righteousness,

through which one loses the life of bliss,

225

than to let go of this miserable bodily life.

Finally and much more miserably does he perish

who goes forth from the life of the spirit,

that, if it had been preserved,

could restore to the body a better life in place of the life lost,

230

and without which it were better not to have been born,

than he who only loses the life of the body,

without which nothing prevents the soul from being blessed.

I live this unhappy life,

I am dead to that life of blessedness.

235

I live in that which is vile to me,

and I am dead to that which is better.

I am more dead than alive,

and I am worse dead than I shall be when I die in the flesh;

for that death will not be evil to me

240

unless the other precede it.

St Paul, I came to you as a sinner to be reconciled,

and lo, when I am in your presence

I find that I am a dead man to be raised.

I came as one accused, in need of an intercessor,

245

and I find rather that I am a dead man

needing to be restored to life.

As a wretch I came, and I find I am the most wretched of all.

I came to you as one living and accused;

and lo, before you I am dead and condemned.

250

Even if I am not yet handed over

to the torments of eternal death,

even now I am abandoned to the spiritual death

that draws to the other.

Even if it is not yet permitted that I be thrust down

255

into the prison of tortures,

already I am confined in a trap of sins.

For however much up till now

I may not have been buried in hell,

I am even now wound in the grave-clothes of sin.

260

Certainly neither could I pray, nor did I know how.

This was true, because I understood

that I was cursed by all things,

and I did not grieve, as if unfeeling.

I knew through my rational nature,

265

but I did not understand;

death had made me insensitive.

Indeed I was dead, and as a dead man I have come to you;

it is only now that I have realized that I am dead.

O God, who will pray for such a dead man?

270

St Paul, I have carried him before you;

do not turn him away;

pray on his behalf.

Lord, Elijah and Elisha brought the dead to life.

They joined themselves to the dead limbs

275

and brought the living from death.

Lord, these came to life by the living touching the dead,

and the dead only came to life to your glory.

Sir, you once said yourself that you ‘were made all things

to all men, that you might gain all’.

280

Friend of God, the example of others makes me bold,

your words draw me to have confidence.

So I say, ‘Sir, sir, come down upon this dead man;

stretch yourself upon this dead man;

make yourself not dead, but like the dead man.

285

Let the caress of your compassionate touch

make the dead man warm;

let the working of your power revive the dead man,

that the dead man may live to glorify God and you.’

Sir, you are not powerless to raise the dead,

290

for by the witness of God

the ‘grace of God is sufficient for you’.

For if when you lived on earth it was sufficient for you,

now that you stay in heaven

it will not be insufficient for you.

295

Why, sir, should what is offered to you

be any longer cast down,

dead without life,

when God attests your power

and you could attest his goodness?

300

Lord God, you said to Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you’.

St Paul, you said, ‘I can do all things’;

and see, the effect of your words is that this dead man

waits for this hope to be realized.

You have spoken, and hearing you the dead man hopes.

305

You have promised, and the dead man desires to pray.

You have spoken and by you it will be accomplished.

I beg you, let me experience the granting of that

which the world rejoices to have known through you.

If you do not refuse to speak,

310

why do you refuse to grant what is asked?

Or is there anyone to whom the dead man can more safely

be carried to be brought back to life,

if when he is offered to you, he is brought back dead?

To whom will you send him if you send him away?

315

Whither shall he go if he is sent away from you?

O God, who can bring back to life if God does not?

From whom shall he receive back the life he has lost

if not from him from whom he first received it?

In whom is there hope if there is no hope in God?

320

St Paul, who will be good to the poor and sorrowful

if he who promised to be weak with the weak be hard?

Who will deign to pray for sinners if he disdains it

who proclaimed himself to be made all things to all men?

Or who will be heard if he is not heard,

325

to whom the grace of God is sufficient?

If goodness and power are deficient in him,

in whom is the grace of God sufficient?

O you two, what will move you if all this does not?

Who will take up that which I offer you

330

to excite your mercy if you do not?

Dead soul, what can you show about yourself

that is not sinful and wretched?

Yet I pray, repenting and grieving.

O, if he who came from heaven to call sinners to repentance,

335

and he who after him in this same thing

laboured more than all,

if these condemn a penitent soul because a sinner,

if he who came from the Father’s heart to carry our sorrows,

and he who called himself weak with the weak,

340

if they despise sorrow because it is wretched,

if he who gave himself over to death

that dead souls might live,

and he who asserted that he was made all things to all men,

if they reject this prayer because it is dead –

345

let it not be so, God, let it not be so.

Keep that away, let it not be so.

If it is so, compassion has perished,

If it is so, pity is dead.

O soul, thrown backward and forward –

350

when you sin you are thrown forward,

when you pray you are thrown back,

whither shall you turn?

Turn yourself to importunity.

To be importuned by one who suffers, this is what they seek.

355

They love those who lament unceasingly before them.

Then do you seek this,

and show this to them without flagging.

O St Paul, where is he that was called

the nurse of the faithful, caressing his sons?

360

Who is that affectionate mother who declares everywhere

that she is in labour for her sons?

Sweet nurse, sweet mother,

who are the sons you are in labour with, and nurse,

but those whom by teaching the faith of Christ

365

you bear and instruct?

Or who is a Christian after your teaching

who is not born into the faith and established in it by you?

And if in that blessed faith we are born

and nursed by other apostles also,

370

it is most of all by you,

for you have laboured and done more than them all in this;

so if they are our mothers, you are our greatest mother.

So then, St Paul, your son is this dead man.

Mother, this dead man is certainly your son.

375

Dear mother, recognize your son

by the voice of his confession;

he recognizes his mother by her loving compassion.

Recognize your son by his confession of Christianity;

he recognizes his mother by the sweetness of goodness.

380

O mother, you who again give birth to your sons,

offer your dead son again, to be raised up by him

who by his death gives life to his servants.

O mother, offer your son to him

who by his death, which was not owing,

385

called back his condemned ones

from the death that was their due;

that he may call back to him the life he has lost.

By baptism he was led out of death;

by barrenness and corruption he is led back into death.

390

O mother, well known for your love,

your son knows the heart of a mother’s goodness.

Show him to God,

you who have brought him back to life

and cared for him living.

395

Pray to him for your son, who is his servant;

pray to him for his servant, who is your son.

And you, Jesus, are you not also a mother?

Are you not the mother who, like a hen,

gathers her chickens under her wings?

400

Truly, Lord, you are a mother;

for both they who are in labour

and they who are brought forth

are accepted by you.

You have died more than they, that they may labour to bear.

405

It is by your death that they have been born,

for if you had not been in labour,

you could not have borne death;

and if you had not died, you would not have brought forth.

For, longing to bear sons into life,

410

you tasted of death,

and by dying you begot them.

You did this in your own self,

your servants by your commands and help.

You as the author, they as the ministers.

415

So you, Lord God, are the great mother.

Then both of you are mothers.

Even if you are fathers, you are also mothers.

For you have brought it about that those born to death

should be reborn to life –

420

you by your own act, you by his power.

Therefore you are fathers by your effect

and mothers by your affection.

Fathers by your authority, mothers by your kindness.

Fathers by your teaching, mothers by your mercy.

425

Then you, Lord, are a mother,

and you, Paul, are a mother too.

If in quantity of affection you are unequal,

yet in quality you are not unalike.

Though in the greatness of your kindness

430

you are not co-equal,

yet in will you are of one heart.

Although you have not equal fullness of mercy,

yet in intention you are not unequal.

Why should I be silent about what you have said?

435

Why should I conceal what you have revealed?

Why should I hide what you have done?

You have revealed yourselves as mothers;

I know myself to be a son.

I give thanks that you brought me forth as a son

440

when you made me a Christian:

you, Lord, by yourself, you, Paul, through him;

you by the doctrine you made,

you by the doctrine breathed into you.

You by the grace you have granted to me,

445

you by the grace you accepted from him.

Paul, my mother, Christ bore you also;

so place your dead son at the feet of Christ, your mother,

because he also is Christ’s son.

Rather, throw him into the heart of Christ’s goodness,

450

for Christ is even more his mother.

Pray that he will give life to a dead son,

who is not so much yours as his.

St Paul, pray for your son, because you are his mother,

that the Lord, who is his mother too,

455

may give life to his son.

Do, mother of my soul,

what the mother of my flesh would do.

At least, if I may hope, I may pray as much as I can;

nor cease until I obtain what I can.

460

Certainly, if you will, you need not despair;

and if you pray, you are able to obtain.

Ask then, that this dead soul which you brought to life,

may be restored to life,

nor cease until he is given back to you, living.

465

And you, my soul, dead in yourself,

run under the wings of Jesus your mother

and lament your griefs under his feathers.

Ask that your wounds may be healed

and that, comforted, you may live again.

470

Christ, my mother,

you gather your chickens under your wings;

this dead chicken of yours puts himself under those wings.

For by your gentleness the badly frightened are comforted,

by your sweet smell the despairing are revived,

475

your warmth gives life to the dead,

your touch justifies sinners.

Mother, know again your dead son,

both by the sign of your cross and the voice of his confession.

Warm your chicken, give life to your dead man,

480

justify your sinner.

Let your terrified one be consoled by you;

despairing of himself, let him be comforted by you;

and in your whole and unceasing grace

let him be refashioned by you.

485

For from you flows consolation for sinners;

to you be blessing for ages and ages. Amen.

↑ Back to top