Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost. Octoechos Tone 3.
Holy and Glorious Apostle Thomas.
Polyeleos Feast.
Galatians 1:11-19. 1 Corinthians 4:9-16. Luke 7:11-16. John 20:19-31.
Read Galatians 1:11-19
Did Paul get his gospel in a different way than the other apostles? The others walked and talked with Jesus, before his crucifixion and after his resurrection. Paul, if he ever encountered Jesus during his earthly ministry, did not. He was famously converted though a vision of blinding light and the voice of Jesus from heaven. Regarding the gospel he preached, Paul is adamant that he “did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ… I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.” Only “after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas (Peter).”
Paul speaks thus, not to differentiate himself and his gospel from that of the other apostles. Quite the opposite. Their gospel did not come from man either. Even Peter had to be shown by a thrice-repeated vision from heaven and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Cornelius’s household that the gospel was for the Gentiles too and that they did not have to become Jews first.
Who Paul does want to differentiate himself from is people, just as in our day, who were preaching a distorted gospel derived from man: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel.” (1:6)
Some people set Paul’s apostolic preaching up against Peter’s apostolic authority. Nothing could be further from Paul’s intention. Our church beautifully celebrates their unity in the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. This commemoration of their martyrdom in Rome is instructive toward what Pope Saint John Paul II called the “ecumenism of the new martyrs.”