Apostoł Paweł - wielki mistyk chrześcijaństwa

Abstract

Aside to St. John the Apostle also Paul of Tarsus can be called a great mystic of Christianity. His life recorded in the pages of the Acts and the contents of his letters bear witness to that. The scene by Damascus (Acts 9, 1-31) tells us about a sudden conversion of the man whom the followers of Christ feared. This experience exerted an enormous influence on his further behaviour. Paul’s characteristic mystical experience is described in 2 Cor 12, 2-7. We learn from it that Paul was transfered to another supernatural sphere. This ecstatic experience was exceptional and Paul could not put it in his own words. The object of his mystic contemplation was, above all, Jesus Christ, God in the Trinity of Persons, and furthermore the reality of the holy baptism and the Eucharist, the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. Unlike St. John the Apostle, who led the life of a contemplator, Paul’s contemplative became a source of his enormous apostolic activity.