Galatians 1:14

In mine own nation being more exceedingly zealous. A more eager lover and follower; or better still, a more jealous lover of it, on behalf of the national institution, handed down to me from my ancestors; a zealot of the law though through ignorance. So much more when he knew the truth was he zealous for the Gospel, so expiating his former evil zeal. From this it seems that Paul's eager zeal was greater than that of his contemporaries, and acted as a handmaid and whetstone of virtue to him. For an eager nature does not creep along the ground, but, like a fire, leaps upwards and attempts to overcome all difficulties. On this, S. Augustine has some excellent remarks: " Souls that are capable of virtue and expansive often give birth to vices first, by which they show the virtue they are most adapted to produce, when they have been carefully disciplined. For instance, the hasty feeling which prompted Moses to revenge the wrong done to his brother in Egypt by a cruel Egyptian was indeed vicious, inasmuch as it overstepped the bounds of authority, but yet it gave great promise for the future. So in the case of Saul, when he was persecuting the Church, when God called to him out of heaven, smote him to the ground, lifted him up, drew him into the Church, he was as it were cut down, pruned, sown in the ground, and fertilised, for his very fierceness in persecuting the Gospel out of jealousy for the traditions of his fathers, thereby thinking that he was doing God service, was, like a vicious woodland growth, but a sign of greater power " (contra Faustum, lib. xxii. c 70). Ver. 15. But when it pleased God. Vatablus has, "When it seemed good to God," which is too weak a rendering of εὺδόκησεν a word that denotes the free call of God's love to grace and salvation.

Who separated me from my mother's womb. Of His loving-kindness He separated me from my mother's womb, and caused me to be born into this world with this object in view, viz., to reveal His Son in me. Before all merit, and when not yet born, He predestined me; and when predestined, separated me from the womb, and caused me to be born; and when born He called me that He might bring me to the knowledge of Christ and His Gospel, and so to the apostleship, that I might preach Christ to the Gentiles.

S. Jerome remarks that the same thing is said of Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5 : " Before I found thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations."Paul here alludes to this, for Jeremiah was a type of Paul. The Hebrew for sanctifier denotesboth sanctified and separated; for that is called sacred which is separated from father, mother, and all earthly things to be dedicated and consecrated to God. So Paul was separated by God's predestination from his mother's womb, and consecrated to the Gospel, to be a prophet and teacher of the Gentiles.

Mystically, says S. Anselm, from my mother's womb denotes "from the darkness of the synagogue to see the light of the Gospel."

Observe that segregatus, "separated," denotes one selected out of the flock, as the predestinate are selected by God out of the flock of men. So much more is an Apostle and Herald of the word of God separated from the many; and, as S. Chrysostom says, he ought to excel the many as a shepherd excels his flock. It was for this reason that the prophet exclaims, in Isaiah 6:5 : " Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." Woe is me! for I am nothing better than others, who are merely unholy themselves. See the comment on Romans 1:1.