This is Scott Hahn and I want to welcome you to the Road to Amaeus, a podcast from the St Paul Center. Take a deep dive into the Sunday mass readings this new year.

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scripture from the heart of the church. Hello, I'm Scott Han and I want to welcome you to the St Paul Center where we are

celebrating the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul along with Catholic Christians all around

the world.

For us here at the St Paul's Center,

this is a special cause of celebration,

not only because it's a patronal feast for St. Paul,

but it also highlights the partnership that God willed providentially for the first century.

You go back and the unlikeliest candidates of all must have been Peter, who starts off as Simon, a fisherman, who has a tendency to open his

mouth in order to change feet.

So frequently he is basically saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and yet God chooses him and Jesus empowers him because if God can use the likes of Simon Peter as G. K. Chesterton reminded us, a chain is only as strong

as its weakest link, and Peter is apparently the weakest link of all until the Holy

Spirit empowers him.

And then the unlikely, the other unlikely candidate

is St Paul himself, because Saul of Tarsus wasn't one of the 12.

In fact, he was the one who is leading the early persecution

against all of the followers of Jesus as we hear about it in the Book of Acts. And so

Saul, trained by the great rabbi, Gamalial, as a prized pupil probably knew the law and the prophets better than the other students of Gamaleo,

and he weaponized them to justify the persecution that went on for quite some time

until on the road to Damascus a light from heaven brighter than the sun and

...