Purported chains that bound the Apostle Paul, while a prisoner in Rome. Displayed in St Paul Outside the Walls Basilica.

Paul had worn chains many times in his missionary travels, persecuted and suffering for daring to share the Good New about Jesus. When in Cesarea prison, he was brought before King Agripp and his wife Bernice to give defence of the charges against him. Paul used it as opportunity for an apologia for the Faith and for his own commitment of faith. It was not an 'apology' as in, 'sorry about that' but one of explanation and holy defence of the Gospel.

At one point he responded to Agrippa who was beginning to get into Paul's story, becoming almost convinced of the truth of it but not ready to make his own commitment; the cost would be too great. 'You've almost got me persuaded to become a Christian,' sadly was his reponse as it has been for many others throughout history.

But Paul was not ashamed - not of the Gospel nor of his bonds borne from time to time - and finally in Rome, where he was confined for several years under house arrest and then (likely under Nero) in the infamous Roman prison, the Mamertine, where he was martyred.

Recently too, they have unearthed beneath the altar of Popes and the ciborium, the sarcophagus of the Apostle Paul, identifying it between 2000 and 2006 by scientists by carbon 14 dating. A hole was opened in 2006 to inspect the sarcophagus' interior revealing fragments of bones from the first or second century AD, with blue fragments of textile that the Pope said in 2008 probably belonged to Paul.

It is thought that these chains, as pictured, are the very ones that then confined Paul's body but not his spirit. About a hundred years ago (I've forgotten the precise date), though he was a follower of Islam, the mayor of Tarsus, Paul's home city, presented the Roman Church with some earth from the city of Tarsus. The bit of earth is displayed near the chains.

Whether truely the bonds of St. Paul (and I think they may well be) or not, they serve to remind us of the cost sometimes of following Jesus, of having faith and being faith-full. May we be the same, challenged by the words of Paul to Agrippa and Bernice, challenged to the very core of our own being and response-apparatus, challenged and choosing to respond: "I believe."

"I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.”  - Paul the Apostle