Paul The Musical! (Updated)
A bunch of us went to watch the St. Paul Musical put up by the Church of St. Mary of the Angels. It was a good work on the whole and we were pleasantly surprised that it turned out as a warm and well-written story that has its characters, and mainly its main lead, St. Paul, grow as the story progresses.
We were a little puzzled why the writers did not mention Ananias at all, didn't he play an important role in helping Paul to see again? However, on the whole, we liked the story progression and how it moved through the start of Paul (as Saul), through his conversion and his trials and finally, death.
What touched me, was the scene before his death. Chained in prison and awaiting death, he asks (sings) if he has finally totally surrendered and done his best? Or is this not enough? And he concludes that for him, to live is Christ, to die is Gain.
Watch the Video!
To me, that was a significant reminder of how St. Paul actually lived his life. He actually had a very close relationship with Jesus. Ever since his conversion, he was TOTALLY changed. How many of us, experienced the presence of Jesus which was no doubt ONE point in our conversion story, but then again, the hardness of the world creeps in and we stop or slow our conversion process?
How many of us, hear or feel God's love, and then after a few months, stop. We then go in never-ending circles trying to "experience" God in new ways, but never realising, that we already experienced God and the next step is to really develop that relationship and be HIS FRIEND, to go out and spread HIS WORD, to people who have not heard about Jesus?
On the other hand, St. Paul as we watched last night, was full of zeal, pushing ahead for the prize, never stopping, never ceasing. He stood up for Christ, and endured all things. Truly, where can we find such a person today? If there were, if we are going to be someone like that, we must really really really love Jesus and we will need to certainly, be willing to accept persecution from Friends and Society.
Watch "ONE Body"
And so I leave the musical, enlightened, reminded, and curious once again, of the depth of the life of St. Paul, in all his humanity. We see him as a great person in the bible who wrote a lot of 'letters'. But sometimes, we just forget his humanity, that he is very much just like us, and that WE can very much be like him -- but it requires our 100% conversion.
So I am challenged, to get back on the conversion process, coz I may have stopped somewhere in the middle, who knows. When life is so comfortable that I'd want to take a backseat and enjoy life, perhaps, it's time to remember, that St. Paul, never once put HIMSELF first, it was always CHRIST.
View Paul, the Musical website here: http://www.stmary.sg/paulthemusical/
The Statue of St Paul
Pius IX (1846-1878) decided to replace older statues of Sts. Peter and Paul, with the current larger ones on Easter 1847. The statue of St Paul was sculpted in 1838 by Adamo Tadolini (b. Bologna 1788, d. Rome 1868). He had studied in Bologna under the direction of De Maria; in 1813 he came to Rome, like De Fabris, and came to the attention of Canova, the greatest sculptor of the period, who took him into his studio.
The statue of St. Paul is 5.55m in height, on a pedestal 4.91m high. It was restored in 1985-86 through the generosity of the Order of the Knights of Columbus.
