Acts 22:14
But he said: The God of our fathers hath preordained thee that thou shouldst know his will, and see the Just One, and shouldst hear the voice from his mouth.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- At ille dixit : Deus patrum nostrorum præordinavit te, ut cognosceres voluntatem ejus, et videres justum, et audires vocem ex ore ejus :
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- ὁ δὲ εἶπεν· Ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν προεχειρίσατό σε γνῶναι τὸ θέλημα αὐτοῦ καὶ ἰδεῖν τὸν δίκαιον καὶ ἀκοῦσαι φωνὴν ἐκ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ,
Haydock's commentary
Shouldst...see the Just One. Our Saviour appeared to St. Paul, as it is said; (chap. ix. 7.) and he is divers times, both in the Prophets and in the Testament, called the Just One. (Witham)
To see and hear the Just One; Him, who is just by excellence, that you also may prove a witness of his resurrection from the dead.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XLVII on Acts xxi. 39, 40
This testimony is incontrovertible; the (unbelief) of the Jews (is left) without excuse. See how many witnesses he brings forward, the elders, the high-priest, and those in the city. Observe his defence, how it is not of cowardly fear (for himself, that he pleads), no, but for teaching and indoctrination. For had not the hearers been stones, they would have felt the force of what he was saying. For up to this point he had themselves as witnesses: the rest, however, was without witnesses: “From whom also I received letters unto the brethren, and went to Damascus, to bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem, for to be punished. And it came to pass, that, as I made my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, 2 Timothy 1:1,2
“‘I thank God,’ he says, ‘that I remember thee,’ so much do I love thee.” This is a mark of excessive love, when a man glories in his affection from loving so much. “I thank God,” he says, “Whom I serve”: and how? “With a pure conscience,” for he had not violated his conscience. And here he speaks of his blameless life, for he everywhere calls his life his conscience. Or because I never gave up any good that I purposed, for any human cause, not even when I was a persecutor. Wherefore he says, “I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief” ( 1 Tim. i. 13 .); all but saying, “Do not suspect that it was done of wickedness.” He properly commends his own disposition, that his love may appear sincere. For what he says is in fact, “I am not false, I do not think one thing and profess another.” So in the book of Acts we read he was compelled to praise himself. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).