Join us today, Wednesday, January 25, at St. Thomas on the Bayou for Noonday Prayer at 12:10 p.m. to celebrate the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle.

All are welcome!

The Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle

The Collect:

O God, by the preaching of your apostle Paul you have caused the light of the Gospel to shine throughout the world: Grant, we pray, that we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance, may show ourselves thankful to you by following his holy teaching; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

On January 25 we remember how Saul (or Paul) of Tarsus, formerly an enemy and persecutor of the early Christian Church, was led by God's grace to become one of its chief spokesmen. Our chief sources of information about the Apostle Paul are several of his own letters, preserved for us in the New Testament, and  the account of him given by Luke in the book of Acts.

Note: The art used is The Conversion of Saint Paul, a painting by Caravaggio - a leading Italian painter of the late 16th and early 17th centuries who became famous for the intense and unsettling realism of his large-scale religious works. Many depictions of Paul’s conversion feature a horse, a detail not mentioned in the Biblical accounts!