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Image: Muse, perhaps Clio, reading a scroll (Attic red-figure lekythos, Boeotia, c. 430 BC)
Pope Francis’ letter on the role of literature in the formation of priests , indeed of all Christians.
1. I had originally chosen to give this Letter a title referring to priestly formation. On reflection, however, the theme is also applicable to the formation of all pastoral workers, indeed of all Christians. What I want to talk about here is the value of reading novels and poetry as part of the journey towards personal maturity.
2. Often in moments of boredom, on periods of boredom, on holiday, in the heat and silence of a deserted place, finding a good book to read can be an that keeps us away from other, less healthy choices.
Similarly, in moments of weariness, anger, disappointment or failure, when prayer itself does not help us find inner serenity, a good book can help us to weather the storm until we find peace of mind.
Time spent reading may well open up new inner spaces that help us avoid being trapped by some obsessive thoughts that can stand in the way of our personal growth.
Indeed, before our current constant exposure to social media, mobile phones and other devices, reading was a common experience, and those who have experienced it know what I mean.
It is not something completely outdated.
3. Unlike audio-visual media, where the product is more self-contained and the time available for “enriching” the narrative or exploring its meaning is usually quite limited, a book requires a greater personal commitment on the part of the reader.
In a sense readers rewrite a text, expanding its scope through their imagination, creating a whole world by bringing into play their skills, their memory, their dreams and their personal history, with all its drama and symbolism.
In this way, a text is created that is quite different from the one the author intended to write.
A literary work is thus a living and ever-fertile text, always capable of speaking in different ways and producing an original synthesis on the part of each of its readers.
As we read, we are enriched by what we receive from the author and this in turn allows us to grow inwardly, so that each new work we read renews and expands our worldview.
4. For this reason, I very much appreciate the fact that at least some seminaries have responded to the obsession with “screens” and with toxic, superficial and violent fake news, by devoting time and attention to literature.
They have done so by setting aside time for quiet reading and for discussion of books, new and old, that still have much to say to us.
Regrettably, however, a sufficient grounding in literature is not generally part of the formation for the ordained ministry.
Literature is often seen as a form of entertainment, a “minor art” that does not need to be part of the formation of future priests and their preparation for pastoral ministry.
With few exceptions, literature is not considered essential.
I think it is important to insist that such an approach is unhealthy.
It can lead to the serious intellectual and spiritual impoverishment of future priests, depriving them of the privileged access that literature offers to the heart of human culture and, more specifically, to the heart of each individual.
5. With this letter, I would like to propose a radical change of course.
In this regard, I would like to agree with the observation of one theologian (R. Latourelle, ‘Literature’) that, “Literature… has its origin in the most irreducible core of the person, in that mysterious level [of their being]… Literature is life, conscious of itself, that reaches its full self-expression through the use of all the conceptual resources of language”.
6. Literature , therefore, in one way or another has to do with our deepest aspirations in this life, because on a profound level literature deals with our concrete existence, with its innate tensions, desires and meaningful experiences.
7. As a young teacher, I discovered this with my students.
Between 1964 and 1965, at the age of 28, I taught literature at a Jesuit school in Santa Fe.
I taught the last two years of high school and had to make sure my students studied El Cid.
The students were not happy; they used to ask if they could read García Lorca instead.
So I decided that they could read El Cid at home, and in class I would discuss which authors the students liked best.
Of course, they wanted to read contemporary literature.
But, as they read the works that interested them at that time, they developed a more general taste for literature and poetry, and thus they moved on to other authors.
In the end, our hearts always searching for something greater, and individuals will find their own way through literature.
for my part, I love the tragedians, because we can all embrace their works as our own, as expressions of our own personal drama.
When we weep for the fate of their characters, we are in fact weeping for ourselves, for our own emptiness, inadequacy and loneliness.
Of course , I am not asking you to read the same things that I did.
Everyone will find books that speak to their own lives and become authentic companions for their journey.
There is nothing more counterproductive than reading something out of a sense of duty, making considerable effort simply because others have said it is essential.
On the contrary, while always being open to guidance, we should choose our reading with an open mind, a willingness to be surprised, a certain flexibility and readiness to learn, trying to discover what we need at each point in our lives.
Faith and Culture
8. Literature is also proves essential for believers who sincerely seek to enter into dialogue with the culture of their time, or simply the life and experience of others.
The Second Vatican Council rightly observed that, “literature and art… seek to penetrate our nature” and “shed light on our sufferings and joys, our needs and possibilities”.
Indeed, literature takes its cue from the realities of our daily lives, its passions and events, our “actions, work, love, death and all the poor things that fill life”.
9. How can we reach the heart of cultures old and new if we do not know, ignore or reject their symbols, messages, artistic expressions and the stories through which they have captured and evoked their highest ideals and aspirations, as well as their deepest sufferings, fears and passions?
How can we speak to the hearts of men and women if we ignore, set aside or fail to appreciate the “stories” through which they have sought to express and expose the drama of their lived experience in novels and poems?
10. The Church, in her missionary experience, has learned to display all her beauty, freshness and novelty in her encounter – often through literature – with the different cultures in which her faith has taken root, without hesitating to engage with and draw from the best of what she has found in each culture.
This approach has freed them from the temptation of a blinkered, fundamentalist self-referentiality that would see a particular cultural-historical “grammar” as capable of expressing the full richness and depth of the Gospel.
Many of the doomsday prophecies that seek to sow despair today are rooted precisely in such a belief.
Contact with different literary and grammatical styles will always allow us to explore more deeply the polyphony of divine revelation without impoverishing it or reducing it to our own needs or ways of thinking.
11. It was thus no chance, for example, that Christian antiquity clearly recognized the need for a serious engagement with the classical culture of the time.
Basil of Caesarea, one of the Eastern Church Fathers, in his Discourse to the Young, composed between 370 and 375, and probably written to his nieces and nephews, extolled the richness of classical literature produced by “those outside”, as he called the pagan authors.
He saw this both in terms of its argumentation, that is, its discourses, useful for theology and exegesis, and in its ethical content, namely the acts, behaviour useful for the ascetic and moral life.
Basil concluded this work by urging young Christians to consider the classics as an ephódion (“viaticum”) for their education and formation, a means of “profit for the soul” (IV, 8-9).
It was precisely from that encounter between Christianity and the culture of the time that a fresh presentation of the Gospel message emerged.
12. Thanks to an evangelical discernment of culture, we can recognize the presence of the Spirit in the diversity of human experience, seeing the seeds of the Spirit’s presence already sown in the events, sensibilities, desires and deep longings present in hearts and in social, cultural and spiritual environments.
We can see this, for example, in the approach taken by Paul before the Areopagus, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles (see footnote below Acts 17:16-34).
In his address, Paul says of God: “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; and as some of your own poets have said, ‘We too are his offspring’.” ( Acts 17:28).
This verse contains two quotations: one indirect, from the poet Epimenides (sixth century B.C.), and the other direct, from the Phaenomena of the poet Aratus of Soli (third century B.C), who wrote of the constellations and the signs of good and bad weather.
Here, “Paul shows himself to be a ‘reader’ and at the same time demonstrates his method of approaching the literary text, which is an evangelical discernment of culture.
The Athenians dismiss him as a spermologos, a ‘babbler’, but literally ‘a gatherer of seeds’.
What was surely intended as an insult turned out, ironically, to be profoundly true.
Paul collected the seeds of pagan poetry and, overcoming his first impressions (cf. Acts17:16), he recognized the Athenians as ‘extremely religious’ and saw in the pages of their classical literature a veritable praeparatio evangelica” [6].
13. What did Paul do? He understood that “literature brings to light the depts of the human person, while revelation and then theology take over to show how Christ enters omtp these depths and illuminates them”.
Faced with these abysses, literature is thus a “path” that helps the pastors of souls to enter into a fruitful dialogue with the culture of their time.
Never a disembodied Christ
4. Before going into the specific reasons why the study of literature should be encouraged in the formation of future priests, I would like to say something about the contemporary religious landscape.
“The return to the sacred and the search for spirituality that characterise our times are ambiguous phenomena. Our challenge today is not so much atheism as the need to respond adequately to the thirst of many people for God, lest they seek to satisfy it with alienating solutions or with a disembodied Jesus”. (Evangelii Gaudium, 89)
The urgent task of proclaiming the Gospel in our time demands that the faithful, and priests in particular, ensure that everyone is able to encounter Jesus Christ made flesh, made man, made history.
We must always be careful never to lose sight of the “flesh” of Jesus Christ: that flesh of passions, emotions and feelings, of words that challenge and console, of hands that touch and heal, of looks that liberate and encourage, of hospitality, forgiveness, indignation, courage, fearlessness; in a word, of love.
15. It is precisely at this level that familiarity with literature can make future priests and all pastoral workers all the more sensitive to the full humanity of the Lord Jesus, in whom his divinity is fully present.
In this way they will be able to proclaim the Gospel in such a way that everyone will be able to experience the truth of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that “only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man become truly clear”.
This is not the mystery of an abstract humanity, but that of all men and women, with their wounds, their desires, their memories and their hopes, which are a concrete part of their lives.
A great good
16. From a practical point of view, many researchers argue that the habit of reading has many positive effects on people’s lives, helping them to acquire a wider vocabulary and thus to develop broader intellectual skills.
It also stimulates their imagination and creativity, enabling them to learn to tell their stories in richer and more expressive ways.
It also improves their ability to concentrate, reduces levels of cognitive decline, and calms stress and anxiety.
17. Even more, reading prepares us to understand and thus cope with different situations in life.
Reading immerses us in the thoughts, worries, tragedies, dangers and fears of characters who ultimately overcome life’s challenges.
By following a story to the end, we may gain insights that will help us in our own lives.
18. In this effort to encourage reading, I would like to mention two texts by well-known authors who have much to teach us in a few words:
Novels “unleash in us, in the space of an hour, all the possible joys and sorrows of which, in life, it would take us years to get to know even a little, and of which the most intense would never reveal themselves to us because the slowness with which they occur prevents us from perceiving them” (M. Proust). (M Proust)
“When I read great literature, I become a thousand people and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with innumerable eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowledge, I transcend myself; and I am never more myself than when I do so. CS Lewis)
19. It is not my intention, however, to focus solely on the personal benefits to be derived from reading, but to reflect on the most important reasons for encouraging a renewed love of reading.
.Listening to someone else’s voice
20. When I think of literature, I am reminded of what the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges used to tell his students, namely that the most important thing is simply to read, to enter into direct contact with literature, to immerse oneself in the living text before us, rather than to fixate on ideas and critical comments.
Borges explained this idea to his students by saying that at first they may understand very little of what they are reading, but in any case they are hearing “another person’s voice”.
This is a definition of literature that I like very much: listening to another person’s voice.
We must never forget how dangerous it is to stop listening to other people’s voices when they challenge us!
We immediately fall into self-isolation; we enter into a kind of “spiritual deafness”, which has a negative effect on our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with God, no matter how much theology or psychology we may have studied.
21. This approach to literature, which makes us sensitive to the mystery of others, teaches us to touch their hearts.
Here, I am thinking of the courageous appeal made by Pope Paul VI to artists, and therefore to writers, on 7 May 1964: “”We need you. Our ministry needs your collaboration. For, as you know, our ministry is to preach and to make the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of the ineffable, of God, accessible and comprehensible, even moving. And you are masters in this work of making the invisible world accessible and intelligible”.
This is the point: the task of the faithful, and of priests in particular, is precisely to “touch” the hearts of others, so that they may be opened to the message of the Lord Jesus.
In this great task, the contribution that literature and poetry can offer is of incomparable value.
22. T.S. Eliot, the poet whose poems and essays, reflecting his Christian faith, occupy a prominent place in modern literature, astutely described today’s religious crisis as that of a widespread emotional incapacity.
If we are to believe this diagnosis, the problem of faith today is not primarily one of believing more or less about certain doctrines.
Rather, it is the inability of so many of our contemporaries to be deeply moved in the face of God, his creation and other human beings.
Here we see the importance of working to heal and enrich our response.
When I returned from my Apostolic Journey to Japan, I was asked what I thought the West could learn from the East. My answer was, “I think that the West is lacking a bit of poetry”.
A “training in discernment”
23. What are the benefits for the priest of contact with literature?
Why is it necessary to consider and promote the reading of great novels as an important element in priestly paideia?
Why is it important for us, in the training of candidates for the priesthood, to recover Karl Rahner’s insight that there is a profound spiritual affinity between the priest and the poet?
24. Let us try to answer these questions by listening to what the German theologian has to tell us.
For Rahner, the words of the poet are full of nostalgia, as it were, they are like “gates into infinity, gates into the incomprehensible. They call upon that which has no name. They stretch out to what cannot be grasped”. Poetry “does not itself give the infinite, it does not bring and contain the infinite”.
That is the task of the word of God and, as Rahner goes on to say, “the poetic word calls upon the word of God”.
For Christians, the Word is God, and all our human words bear traces of an intrinsic longing for God, a tending towards that Word.
It can be said that the truly poetic word participates analogically in the Word of God, as the Letter to the Hebrews clearly states (the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Heb 4:12-13).
25. In the light of this, Karl Rahner can draw a striking parallel between the priest and the poet: the word “alone can redeem that which constitutes the ultimate captivity of all realities that are not expressed in word: the silness of their reference to God”.
26. Literature, then, sensitises us to the relationship between forms of expression and meaning.
It offers a training of discernment that sharpens the future priest’s ability to gain insight into his own interiority and into the world around him.
Reading thus becomes the “path” that leads him to the truth of his own being and the occasion for a process of spiritual discernment that will not be without its moments of anxiety and even crisis. Indeed, many pages of literature correspond to what Saint Ignatius calls spiritual “desolation”
27. This is how Ignatius explains it “I call desolation the darkness of the soul, the restlessness of the spirit, the inclination to what is base and earthly, the restlessness that arises from many disturbances and temptations that lead to a lack of faith, a lack of hope, a lack of love. The soul is totally sluggish, lukewarm, sad and, as it were, separated from its Creator and Lord”.
28. The difficulty or boredom that we feel in reading certain texts is not necessarily bad or useless. Ignatius himself observed that in “those who are going from bad to worse”, the good spirit works by provoking restlessness, agitation and dissatisfaction.
This would be the literal application of the first Ignatian rule for the discernment of spirits, which deals with those who “go from one mortal sin to another”.
In such persons the good spirit, by “making use of the light of reason will rouse the sting of conscience and fill them with remorse”, and in this way will lead them to goodness and beauty.
29. It is clear, then, that the reader is not simply the recipient of an edifying message, but a person who is challenged to move forward on a shifting terrain where the boundaries between salvation and damnation are not a priori obvious and clear.
Reading as an act of “discernment” directly involves the reader, both as the “subject” who reads and as the “object” of what is read.
When reading a novel or a work of poetry, the reader actually experiences “being read” by the words he or she is reading.
Readers can thus be compared to players on a field: they play the game, but the game is also played through them, in the sense that they are totally caught up in the action.
Attention and digestion
30. In terms of content is concerned, we should realize that literature is like “a telescope”, to use a well-known image of Marcel Proust.
As such, it is pointed at beings and things, and enables us to see “the immense distance” that separates the totality of human experience from our perception of it.
“Literature can also be compared to a photographic laboratory, where images of life can be processed in order to bring out their contours and nuances.
This is what literature is ‘for’: it helps us to ‘develop’ the image of life, to challenge us about its meaning, and, in a word, to experience life as it is.
31. However, our habitual view of the world, however, tends to be “telescoped” and narrowed by the pressure exerted on us by our many practical and short-term objectives.
Even our commitment to service – liturgical, pastoral and charitable – can become focused only on goals to be achieved.
But, as Jesus reminds us in the parable of the sower, the seed must fall on deep soil in order to mature fruitfully over time, without being choked by rocky soil or thorns (Mt 13:18-23).
There is always the danger that an excessive concern for efficiency will dull discernment, weaken sensitivity and ignore complexity.
We urgently need to counter this inevitable temptation to a frenetic and uncritical lifestyle by stepping back, slowing down, taking time to look and listen.
This can happen when a person simply stops to read a book.
32. We need to rediscover ways of relating to reality that are more welcoming, not merely strategic and focused on results, ways that allow us to experience the infinite grandeur of being.
A sense of perspective, leisure and freedom are the hallmarks of an approach to reality that finds in literature a privileged, albeit not exclusive, form of expression.
Literature thus teaches us how to look and see, to discern and explore the reality of individuals and situations as a mystery charged with a surplus of meaning that can only be partially understood through categories, explanatory schemes, linear dynamics of causes and effects, means and ends.
33. Another striking image for the role of literature comes from the activity of the human body, and specifically the act of digestion.
The eleventh-century monk William of Saint-Thierry and the seventeenth-century Jesuit Jean-Joseph Surin developed the image of a cow chewing her cud – ruminatio – as an image of contemplative reading.
Surin spoke of the “stomach of the soul”, while the Jesuit Michel De Certeau spoke of an authentic “physiology of digestive reading”.
Literature helps us to reflect on the meaning of our presence in this world, to “digest” and assimilate it, and to grasp what lies beneath the surface of our experience.
Literature, in a word, serves to interpret life, to discern its deeper meaning and its essential tensions.
Seeing through the eyes of others
34. In terms of the use of language, reading a literary text places us in the position of “seeing through the eyes of others”, thus gaining a breadth of perspective that broadens our humanity.
We develop an imaginative empathy that enables us to identify with how others see, experience and respond to reality.
Without such empathy, there can be no solidarity, sharing, compassion, mercy. In reading we discover that our feelings are not simply our own, they are universal, and so even the most destitute person does not feel alone.
35. The marvelous diversity of humanity, and the diachronic and synchronic plurality of cultures and fields of learning, become, in literature, a language capable of respecting and expressing all their variety. At the same time, they translate into a symbolic grammar that makes them meaningful to us, not foreign but shared.
The uniqueness of literature lies in the fact that it conveys the richness of experience not by objectifying it as in the descriptive models of the sciences or the judgements of literary criticism, but by expressing and interpreting its deeper meaning.
36. When we read a story, thanks to the author’s powers of description, each of us can see before our eyes the crying of an abandoned girl, an old woman pulling the blanket over her sleeping grandson, the struggles of a shopkeeper trying to eke out a living, the shame of one who bears the brunt of constant criticism, the boy who takes refuge in dreams as his only escape from a miserable and violent life.
As these stories evoke faint echoes of our own inner experiences, we become more sensitive to the experiences of others.
We step out of ourselves to enter into their lives, we sympathize with their struggles and desires, we see things through their eyes and eventually we become companions on their journey.
We become involved in the lives of the fruit seller, the prostitute, the orphaned child, the bricklayer’s wife, the old woman who still believes she will one day find her Prince Charming.
We can do this with empathy and sometimes with tenderness and understanding.
37. As Jean Cocteau wrote to Jacques Maritain: “Literature is impossible. We must get out of it.
It is useless to try to get out through literature; only love and faith enable us to go out of ourselves”.
But can we ever really go out of ourselves if the sufferings and joys of others do not burn in our hearts? Here, I would say that, for us as Christians, nothing that is human is indifferent to us.
38. Literature is not relativistic; it does not strip us of values.
The symbolic representation of good and evil, of truth and falsehood, as realities that in literature take the form of individuals and collective historical events, does not dispense from moral judgement but prevents us from blind or superficial condemnation.
As Jesus says, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (Mt 7:3).
39. When we read about the violence, narrowness or weakness of others, we have the opportunity to reflect on our own experience of these realities.
By giving the reader a broader view of the grandeur and misery of human experience, literature teaches us patience in trying to understand others, humility in approaching complex situations, gentleness in judging individuals, and sensitivity to our human condition. Judgement is certainly necessary, but we must never forget its limited scope.
Judgement must never result in a death sentence, the elimination of people or the suppression of our humanity for the sake of a soulless absolutizing of the law.
40. The wisdom born of literature instils in the reader greater perspective, a sense of limits, the ability to value experience over cognitive and critical thinking, and to embrace a poverty that brings extraordinary riches.
By acknowledging the futility and perhaps even the impossibility of reducing the mystery of the world and humanity to a dualistic polarity of true vs false or right vs wrong, the reader accepts the responsibility of passing judgement, not as a means of domination, but rather as an impetus towards greater listening.
And at the same time, a readiness to partake in the extraordinary richness of a history which is due to the presence of the Spirit, but is also given as a grace, an unpredictable and incomprehensible event that does not depend on human activity, but redefines our humanity in terms of hope for salvation.
The spiritual power of literature
41. hope that with these brief reflections I have highlighted the role that literature can play in educating the hearts and minds of pastors and future pastors.
Literature can greatly stimulate the free and humble exercise of our reason, a fruitful recognition of the diversity of human languages, a broadening of our human sensibilities and, finally, a great spiritual openness to hearing the voice that speaks through many voices..
42. Literature helps the reader to overthrow the idols of a self-referential, falsely self-sufficient and statically conventional language, which at times also risks polluting our ecclesial discourse and imprisoning the freedom of the word.
The literary word is a word that sets language in motion, liberating and purifying it.
Ultimately, it opens the word to even more expressive and expansive vistas.
It opens our human words to welcome the Word that is already present in human speech, not when it sees itself as knowledge that is already full, definitive and complete, but when it becomes a listening and expectation of the One who comes to make all things new (He who sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” – Rev 21:5).
43. Finally, the spiritual power of literature brings us back to the primordial task entrusted by God to our human family: the task of “naming” other beings and things (So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper fit for himGen 2:19-20).
The mission of stewardship of creation that God entrusted to Adam included, above all, the recognition of his own dignity and the importance of the existence of other beings.
Priests are also entrusted with this primary task of “naming”, of giving meaning, of becoming instruments of communion between creation and the Word made flesh and its power to illuminate every dimension of our human condition.
44. The affinity between priest and poet is thus expressed in the mysterious and indissoluble sacramental union between the divine Word and our human words, giving rise to a ministry that becomes a service born of listening and compassion, a charism that becomes a responsibility, a vision of the true and the good that is revealed as beauty.
How can we fail to reflect on the words left us by the poet Paul Celan: “Those who truly learn to see, approach the unseen.”.
Given in Rome, at Saint John Lateran, on 17 July in the year 2024, the twelfth of my Pontificate.
FRANCIS
Footnote on Acts (17:16-34)
16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. 17 So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the market place every day with those who chanced to be there. 18 Some also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers met him. And some said, “What would this babbler say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he preached Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took hold of him and brought him to the Are-op′agus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you present? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears; we wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
22 So Paul, standing in the middle of the Are-op′agus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, 28 for
‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring. 29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead.” 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from among them. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among them Dionys′ius the Are-op′agite and a woman named Dam′aris and others with them.
