O glorious St. Paul, who from a persecutor of the Christian name didst become an Apostle of burning zeal, and who, in order that Jesus Christ might be known to the furthermost bounds of the earth, didst joyfully suffer imprisonment, scourging, stoning, shipwreck, and every kind of persecution, and who didst finally shed thy blood to the last drop; obtain for us the grace of accepting, as divine favours, the infirmities, torments and calamities of this life, so that we may not be drawn from the service of God by the vicissitudes of this our exile, but on the contrary may prove ourselves more and more faithful and fervent. Amen.
Prayer to St. Paul the Apostle
'Imprisonment, scourging, stoning, shipwreck, and every kind of persecution' — the catalogue Paul himself wrote out in 2 Corinthians, turned into a request to accept our own troubles as divine favours.
On 25 January and 29 June; in sickness and hard trouble; for converts.
The prayer simply reads back to Paul the list he gave of himself: 'Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea' (2 Corinthians 11:25). And then it asks for the one thing that makes such a life possible — the grace of accepting infirmities, torments and calamities 'as divine favours', so that the vicissitudes of exile do not draw us away from the service of God.
Leo XIII indulgenced it on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1897. The text is the Raccolta's of 1910.
Three hundred days, once a day — Leo XIII, 8 December 1897 (Raccolta, 1910, no. 324).
