Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls

Today we travel down the Via Ostiense, to the tomb of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, St. Paul.  The story of his conversion and travels of evangelization recorded in Sacred Scripture (see Acts 8-28), tradition holds that he was killed during the Neronian persecutions, in 64 or 67.  His status as a Roman citizen meant that he merited a more dignified manner of death than the cross or the arena, and so at the end of his life he too once traveled this road, to a place now marked by the monastery of Tre Fontane. Beheaded, his body was interred in a tomb along this busy road between Rome and the port at Ostia.  

There it was quietly honored for many years, until Constantine began his building program on behalf of the recently legalized Church.  This first church of St. Paul’s was complete by 340 at the latest, although the nearness of the tomb to the road dictated that the church above it be rather small.  The popularity of the Apostle soon drew large crowds to visit the site, making apparent the need for a larger church.  The emperors Valentian II, Theodosius I, and Arcadius finally took the initiative to provide for a more fitting edifice and building began around 385.  When it was dedicated around 400, in the reign of the emperor Honorius, it was the largest and most architecturally advanced basilica in Rome; its builders had learned from experience with the older churches at the Lateran and Vatican how to build a structure that would best serve both as a shrine and a center of worship.  The embellishment of the basilica soon began, including the still remaining, though heavily restored, mosaic on the triumphal arch  (From: Procedamus in Pacem, PNAC).

Collect

O God, who reward the merits of the just 

and offer pardon to sinners who do penance, 

have mercy, we pray, on those who call upon you, 

that the admission of our guilt may serve 

to obtain your pardon for our sins. 

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 

one God, for ever and ever.