Vatican Radio recently featured an interview with Dominican Father Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, a New Testament professor at the École Biblique in Jerusalem. He's one of the world's most renowned scholars on the letters of Saint Paul, and the author of around half a dozen books on the apostle's life and work.

I had the privilege of meeting Fr. O'Connor back in 1996 while I was a seminarian studying in West Jerusalem. My classmates and I attended a lecture he gave at the École Biblique about the Way of the Cross. I had known of him by way of his excellent guide to the holy sites in Israel entitled The Holy Land, which, happily, has just been updated this spring. It was an exceptionally helpful supplement to the materials in my Biblical Archaeology class. The thing that most impressed me about Fr. O'Connor when I met him was that he has not only the mind of a great scholar, but also the heart of a great lover. When he described the narrow streets of Jerusalem down which Jesus carried the crossbeam -- streets so narrow that at times Jesus would have had to walk at an angle to clear the walls -- Fr. O'Connor began to weep. Here was a man who had probably delivered this lecture, or variations on it, dozens of times, but it had not failed to move his heart.

Back to the Pauline year interview: An MP3 version of the audio is available here: Spotlight on Paul (6/25/08)