THE TABLET
June 28, 2008

The Year of St. Paul

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

The Holy Father, several months ago, announced a special Jubilee Year to honor the Apostle Paul on the occasion of the bi-millennium of St. Paul’s birth.  It will begin June 28 and extend to June 29 of next year.  When Pope Benedict XVI announced this Pauline Jubilee Year, he stressed the fact that St. Paul “lived and worked for Christ as he suffered and died, how timely an example today.”  This special Jubilee Year of St. Paul will give us an opportunity to study his writings with more intensity.  As you know, St. Paul the Apostle was born out of normal time, being first a persecutor of the Church and then became its greatest proponent.

Perhaps the most telling example of St. Paul’s efforts to convert the world took place when he found himself in Athens.  He made his way to the Areopagus, which was the place where any Athenian citizen could debate and present philosophical and even religious views.  St. Paul attempted to speak to the pagan culture of his day.  He pointed to an altar dedicated to an unknown god and tried to use the openness of the Greeks to many gods to focus on the one true God.  Unfortunately, Paul was not very successful, and they asked him to come back again because when he spoke of the Resurrection, people were completely dumbfounded.  The culture of our own day reflects a neo-paganism which is no less difficult to preach to than the culture of St. Paul’s day. 

During this year, dedicated to honoring St. Paul and studying his teaching, perhaps we will come closer to how he was able to influence a culture that was completely closed to the message of Jesus Christ, not unlike the culture of our own day.  With prayer and meditation, closely following St. Paul’s missionary journeys and understanding his many epistles, we have the opportunity to come closer to the Lord Jesus Himself with whom Paul identified to the point of saying, “now I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”  This is the aim of each of our lives; we no longer live for ourselves, but for Christ Jesus.

Although there are many obstacles in our world today to undertaking the New Evangelization, we can learn the lessons of the first evangelization where dedicated individuals made themselves into effective instruments through the propagation of the faith.

Our Diocese will attempt to find opportunities to study more closely Paul’s writings, but also to pray with St. Paul and to follow his missionary journeys on our own pilgrimages throughout the Diocese.  Certain places of pilgrimage will be identified which will enable the faithful to gain indulgences if they follow the pilgrimage plan.  The traveling overseas to follow Paul’s footsteps is another possibility that Father Gerard Sauer is looking into as the Director of Pilgrimages.

We need not travel far or return to courses of scripture analysis in order to live the year with St. Paul.  We can identify with him, pray with him and witness with him in so many ways.

St. Paul “put out into the deep” during his missionary journeys; in fact, he was even shipwrecked on his way to Rome.  I hope our attempts to evangelize will not be shipwrecked, but if in some way they are not as successful as we would like, we can take confidence with St. Paul, who never was swayed by any adversity, but preached all the louder and clearer.