Year of St. Paul Retrospective

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By John Thavis

Pope Benedict XVI attends a vespers service at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome Jan. 25.
(CNS photo/GiampieroSposito, Reuters) (Jan. 26, 2009)

He is known as the model of Christian conversion and the archetypal missionary, the most prolific of the early apostles, the man who took the Gospel of Christ into the world of non-Jews and helped set the church on a more universal path.

Two thousand years after his birth, St. Paul was honored in a jubilee year lasting from June 28, 2008, to June 29, 2009. Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the “Year of St. Paul” and almost single-handedly gave the jubilee its content -- in talks and homilies, liturgical celebrations and indulgences for pilgrims who walked in the footsteps of the “Apostle of the Gentiles.”

With local churches joining in the commemoration, the result was a global mosaic of Pauline activities that ranged from top-level biblical conferences in Europe and the United States, pastoral letters in places like China and Cambodia, and the first missionary congress in Pakistan.

Pope Benedict chose to highlight St. Paul for one primary reason: he wanted to reinvigorate the sense of mission among the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics. For the pope, the Apostle Paul embodied an evangelizing spirit based on personal conversion.

“Dear brothers and sisters, as in early times, today too Christ needs apostles ready to sacrifice themselves. He needs witnesses and martyrs like St. Paul,” the pope said when he proclaimed the jubilee.

“Paul, a former violent persecutor of Christians, when he fell to the ground dazzled by the divine light on the road to Damascus, did not hesitate to change sides to the Crucified One and followed him without second thoughts. He lived and worked for Christ, for him he suffered and died. How timely his example is today!”

The pope was convinced that, like St. Paul, committed Christians have a duty to share and communicate the saving message of the Gospel to all people. But he was worried that in a world that considers tolerance a supreme virtue, many contemporary Catholics had lost this missionary drive.

Pope Benedict also wanted to turn a spotlight on one of Rome’s oft-neglected patriarchal churches, the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls.

At the beginning of the jubilee year, Vatican officials announced that archeologists had confirmed that the tomb of St. Paul -- a rough-hewn marble sarcophagus -- had been identified beneath the main altar of the basilica. It could not be opened because it was literally buried in the church’s architecture, but the news helped draw increasingly large crowds along a special Pauline pilgrimage route in Rome.

Italian young people listen to a guide describing the central doors into the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome March 10.
(CNS photo/Cindy Wooden) (March 13, 2009)

“Who was this Paul?”
The Year of St. Paul unfolded on many levels, and it was Pope Benedict who led the way. At the vespers service opening the jubilee, the pope gave the event a strong ecumenical tone by inviting leaders of other Christian churches, including Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the spiritual head of the Orthodox churches, and many who had come from areas where St. Paul evangelized -- in the Holy Land, Syria, Greece, Cyprus and Asia Minor.

At the prayer service, Pope Benedict asked: “Who was this Paul?” The pope spent the next year answering the question.

Born in Tarsus, in what is today part of modern Turkey, St. Paul grew up in a Jewish family and became a tent-maker by trade. Said to be present at the stoning of St. Stephen, the first martyr, he became a zealous persecutor of Christians throughout the Roman lands of the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor.

On the way to arrest Christians in Syria, as recounted in Scripture, St. Paul was blinded temporarily by a vision of Jesus Christ. As he recovered in Damascus, he was “filled with the Spirit” and was baptized. He eventually made a series of four major missionary journeys that stretched from Jerusalem to Rome, where he was finally put to death by Roman authorities.

In his opening homily and a series of 21 weekly audience talks, Pope Benedict probed more deeply into the apostle’s life and faith, beginning with his dramatic conversion based on a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. The pope explained: “His faith is not a theory, an opinion about God and the world. His faith is the impact of God's love on his heart.”

St. Paul knew that announcing the Gospel required courage and was never free from struggle, and that the truth must not be hidden in order to obtain a “superficial harmony,” the pope said. The apostle also knew that evangelizing required sacrifice, and that “in a world in which the lie is powerful, truth is paid in suffering,” the pope said.

As Pope Benedict drew St. Paul’s personal and theological portrait, he emphasized the lessons for people today: “This is the aim of the Pauline year: to learn about St. Paul, to learn the faith, to learn about Christ, to learn the path of the righteous life.”

One of the most important aspects of St. Paul’s missionary impact was his universal focus. At the jubilee’s opening liturgy, Patriarch Bartholomew explained that Orthodox churches were also participating in the Year of St. Paul because of his immense influence on the churches of the East. He was a man who bridged the Greek and Roman cultures, the patriarch said.

And as Pope Benedict explained, St. Paul, who was born a Jew, tried to overcome the distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, men and women by teaching that “all of you are one in Jesus Christ.” In a real sense, he anticipated the church’s multicultural mission.

The apostle’s evangelizing excursions were possible because of the Roman Empire’s political stability at the time, the pope noted. In his more than 10,000 miles of missionary journeys, St. Paul traveled through the vast territories safely because of the Romans’ extensive network of roads.

Nuns light candles in front of a sculpture of St. Paul on the wall of St. Paul's Church in Damascus, Syria, June 29.
(CNS photo/Khaled al-Hariri, Reuters)
(July 1, 2008)

Exploring St. Paul’s impact
The relevance of St. Paul to the contemporary globalized culture was studied in conferences and symposiums during the jubilee year. The St. Paul’s Colloquium in Rome, a meeting of Catholic and Protestant scholars, examined how the apostle consistently stripped away cultural baggage and drove his audiences back to the question of how the Gospel radically transforms one’s life.

A U.S. Scripture scholar, Father Raymond F. Collins, explained that because Catholic priests focus mainly on the life of Jesus -- recounted in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- they have tended to pay less attention to St. Paul’s writings in their preaching. Increasingly, though, St. Paul’s letters have been getting more attention from Catholic scholars and theologians.

New collections of St. Paul’s letters were published in the United States and around the world during the jubilee year, and in many U.S. dioceses, pastoral programs were established to familiarize the faithful with the apostle and his impact on the church’s history.

The U.S. activities included pastoral letters from bishops on St. Paul, lesson plans for catechism and adult education, Bible reflections, special liturgies, and local and international pilgrimages. Catholic newspapers like Our Sunday Visitor set up special web pages offering resources on St. Paul. Several dioceses, including the Archdiocese of Boston, offered online commentaries on selected Scriptural passages.

Some bishops were particularly creative. In suggesting “Ten Ways to Celebrate the Year of St. Paul,” Bishop Michael Saltarelli of Wilmington, Delaware, even proposed an Internet tour of Pauline paintings available at the JesusWalk website, and suggested modern movies with a connection to St. Paul’s message.

Across the U.S. Catholic world, lectures and meetings took up the theme of St. Paul. Speaking in the Rockville Centre Diocese in New York at the annual Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua lecture, Archbishop Demetrios, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States and a Pauline scholar, pointed out that St. Paul is quoted not just in church circles but throughout society: “Fight the good fight,” “labor of love,” “the wages of sin” and “suffer fools gladly” are all common Pauline expressions.

At a deeper level, Archbishop Demetrios said, the apostle’s legacy was based on his preaching that Christ crucified represents “the medicine of first resort for every spiritual weakness,” and thus there can be “no possibility of compromise.”

Around the world, the rediscovery of St. Paul found many forms. A special hymn for the jubilee was created in Rome. In Turkey, which St. Paul crisscrossed three times, liturgies and a national pilgrimage were organized for the minority Christian community. In Damascus, Syria, the ancient street that led to St. Paul’s hiding place after his conversion was restored to its original condition. In Australia, Archbishop Mark Coleridge made available for download a series of mp3 audio files, video lectures and DVDs featuring the life and writings of St. Paul. In China, bishops issued pastoral letters on St. Paul and evangelization, while in Morocco church leaders organized group meetings for prayer and discussion.

A Pauline pilgrim’s path
Pilgrims coming to Rome -- and there were many -- found themselves with an itinerary of nine sites linked to the life of St. Paul, including two ancient churches built upon houses where the apostle stayed, the Mamertine Prison where he was incarcerated by the Roman authorities, and the Abbey of the Three Fountains where he was beheaded on the order of the Emperor Nero. According to legend, his severed head rebounded and struck the earth in three different places from which fountains sprang forth.

A plenary indulgence, the remission of temporal punishment due to sin, was offered for pilgrims who came to Rome and crossed the threshold of the “Pauline Doors,” prayed at the tomb of St. Paul, confessed their sins, received the Eucharist and offered prayers for the pope’s intentions. The indulgence was also offered to Catholics participating in local events marking the jubilee year.

As the Year of St. Paul progressed, Pope Benedict made the apostle the focus of many of his public speeches and sermons, finding a “St. Paul angle” in his talks to bishops, religious orders, university students and his own Roman Curia. The pope had much to draw upon: St. Paul’s 14 letters constitute about half of the New Testament.

Visiting Paris in 2008, the pope recalled St. Paul’s preaching against idolatry and greed, and asked whether it wasn’t relevant today: “Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power and even knowledge, diverted man from his true identity?”

When the pope wrote his annual message for the World Day for Migrants and Refugees, he found food for thought in the writings of St. Paul, a “migrant by vocation” and an ambassador-at-large for Christ.

The pope frequently cited the apostle’s ability to evangelize in cultures that are new to Christianity. For example, he told Asian bishops that, like St. Paul, they need to find ways to present the Gospel in ways that resonate with the traditional spiritual wisdom of their continent.

Unity and credibility
Above all, the pope highlighted St. Paul’s missionary courage. He told a group of newly appointed bishops to imitate St. Paul’s persistence in the face of personal mistreatment and dangers, and to remember the words of his letter to his evangelizing companion Timothy: “Bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God.“

Pope Benedict’s idea was to make the Year of St. Paul more than a history class. He applied the saint’s lessons to modern life, especially when it came to rivalries and controversies within the church community.

In early 2009, at the peak of debate over several of his own decisions in the church, the pope quoted St. Paul’s admonition to Galatian Christians not to “go on biting and devouring one another.” The pope said St. Paul understood that church unity was the primary requisite for a credible witness of the Gospel in the world, and that without it, evangelization simply won’t take hold.

That was the theme of one of the major Pauline year events in Rome, the ecumenical vespers service on January 25, 2009, the feast of the conversion of St. Paul. The liturgy marked the close of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and Pope Benedict was once again joined by Orthodox, Protestant and Anglican representatives in the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls.

In his homily, the pope said the same Lord who called St. Paul to conversion addresses members of his church today, calling each one by name and asking: Why have you divided me? Why have you injured the unity of my body? St. Paul’s message, he said, is that without internal unity, Christians cannot bring peace and reconciliation to the ruptured societies across the globe.

Pope Benedict is to return to the same basilica on June 29, 2009, to close the Year of St. Paul, thus ending the 2,000th birthday celebration for the apostle whose evangelizing energy helped move the church into the world.