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Pope Benedict XVI- Homilies |
 "Paul Wants to Speak With Us Today"
Homily
at Vespers Service to Inaugurate the Pauline Year
Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls
H.H. Benedict XVI
June 28, 2008
www.zenit.org
Holiness and
Fraternal Delegates,
Lord Cardinals,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We are gathered before the tomb of St. Paul, who was born 2,000
years ago in Tarsus of Cilicia, in present-day Turkey. Who was
this Paul? In the temple of Jerusalem, before an agitated crowd
that wanted to kill him, he introduced himself with these words:
"I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but educated in this
city, instructed at the feet of Gamaliel in the exact observance
of the Law of our fathers; I was full of zeal for God." At the
end of his journey he would say of himself: "I have been made a
herald and apostle, teacher of the Gentiles in the faith and in
the truth."
Teacher of the Gentiles, apostle and herald of Jesus Christ,
thus he characterized himself in a retrospective look over his
life. However, he did not look only to the past. "Teacher of the
Gentiles" -- this word opens to the future, which we recall with
veneration. He is, also for us, our teacher, apostle and herald
of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, we have come together not to reflect on a past
history, irrevocably surpassed. Paul wants to speak with us
today. That is why I wanted to convoke this special "Pauline
year": to listen to him and to drink from him, as our teacher,
in the faith and truth, in which are rooted the reasons for
unity among the disciples of Christ. In this perspective, I
wished to light -- for this bimillenary of the apostle's birth
-- a special "Pauline Flame," which will remain lit during the
whole year, in a special niche placed in the portico of the
basilica. To solemnize this event, I have also opened the
so-named Pauline Door, through which I entered the basilica
accompanied by the patriarch of Constantinople, the cardinal
archpriest and other religious authorities.
For me it is a motive of profound joy that the opening of the
Pauline year assumes a special ecumenical character, given the
presence of numerous delegates and representatives of other
Churches and ecclesial communities, which I welcome with an open
heart. I greet first of all His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew I
and the members of the delegation accompanying him, as well as
the large group of laymen from several parts of the world who
have come to Rome to participate in these moments of prayer and
reflection with him and all of us. I greet the fraternal
delegates of the Churches that have a special bond with the
Apostle Paul -- Jerusalem, Antioch, Cyprus and Greece -- that
form part of the geographic environment of the apostle's life
before his arrival in Rome. I cordially greet the brothers of
the different Churches and ecclesial communities of the East and
West, together with all of you I have wished to take part in
this solemn opening of the year dedicated to the Apostles of the
Gentiles.
We are gathered, therefore, to questions ourselves about the
great apostle of the Gentiles. Not only do we ask ourselves,
"Who was Paul?" Above all, we ask ourselves "Who is Paul?" "What
is he saying to me?" At this hour of the beginning of the
Pauline year that we are inaugurating, I would like to choose
three texts from the rich testimony of the New Testament, in
which [Paul's] inner physiognomy appears, that which is specific
about his character.
In the Letter to the Galatians, he has given us a very personal
profession of faith, in which he opens his heart to the readers
of all times and reveals what is the most profound source of his
life: "I live in the faith of the Son of God who loved me and
gave himself up for me." All that Paul does starts from this
center. His faith is the experience of being loved by Jesus
Christ in a totally personal way; it is awareness of the fact
that Christ faced death not for something anonymous, but for
love of him, of Paul, and that, risen, Christ still loves him,
has given himself for him. His faith is having been captured by
the love of Jesus Christ, a love that affects him in his
innermost being and transforms him. His faith is not a theory,
an option about God or the world. His faith is the impact of the
love of God on his heart. So, this faith itself is love of Jesus
Christ.
For many, Paul appears as a combative man who knows how to use
the sword of the word. Indeed, in his path as apostle, there was
no lack of disputes. He did not seek a superficial harmony. In
his first letter dedicated to the Thessalonians, he himself
says: "We had the courage in our God to declare to you the
Gospel of God in face of great opposition. … For we never used
either words of flattery, as you know, or a cloak for greed."
The truth was too great for him to be ready to sacrifice it in
view of an external success. The truth he had experienced in his
encounter with the Risen One merited for him struggle,
persecution, and suffering. However, what motivated him in the
depth of his being was being loved by Jesus Christ and the
desire to transmit this love to others. Paul was someone able to
love, and all his work and suffering is explained from this
center.
The concepts underlying his proclamation can only be understood
on the basis of this. Let us take only one of his key words:
freedom. The experience of being loved to the end by Christ
opened his eyes about truth and the path of human existence;
that experience embraced everything. Paul was free as a man
loved by God that, in virtue of God, was able to love together
with him. This love is now the "law" of his life and, precisely
thus, was the freedom of his life. He speaks and acts, moved by
the responsibility of love; he is free, and given that he is one
who loves, he lives totally in the responsibility of this love
and does not take freedom as a pretext for pleasure and egoism.
He who loves Christ as Paul loved him, can truly do what he
wills, because his love is united to the will of Christ and,
therefore, to the will of God, because his will is anchored in
truth and because his will is no longer simply his will, arbiter
of his autonomous I, but is integrated in the freedom of God and
from it receives the path to follow.
In the search for St. Paul's inner physiognomy, I would like, in
the second place, to recall the word that the Risen Christ spoke
to him on the road to Damascus. Earlier the Lord asked him:
"Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" He answered: "Who are
you, Lord?" And he received the reply: "I am Jesus, whom you are
persecuting." By persecuting the Church, Paul was persecuting
Jesus himself. "You are persecuting me."
Jesus identifies himself with the Church in a single subject. In
this exclamation of the Risen One -- which transformed Saul's
life -- is contained the whole doctrine of the Church as Body of
Christ. Christ did not return to Heaven, leaving a handful of
followers to carry his cause forward. The Church is not an
association that wishes to promote a certain cause. It is not
about a cause. It is about the person of Jesus Christ, who also
as Risen remained "flesh." He has flesh and bones," affirms the
Risen One in Luke, in face of the disciples who thought he was a
ghost. He has a body. He is personally present in the Church.
"Head and Body" form a single subject, said Augustine. "'Know
you not that your bodies are members of Christ?' wrote Paul to
the Corinthians, and he adds: 'That, according to the Book of
Genesis, man and woman become one flesh?'"
So Christ becomes one spirit with his own, one subject in the
new world of the resurrection. In all this, the Eucharistic
mystery is visualized, in which Christ constantly gives his Body
and makes of us one Body: "Is not the bread we break communion
with the body of Christ? Because, though being many, we are only
one bread and one body, as we all share in one bread."
He addresses us with these words, at this moment, not just Paul
but the Lord himself: "How were you able to lacerate my Body?"
Before the face of Christ, this question becomes at the same
time an urgent appeal: Bring us together again from all our
divisions. Make this again a reality today: There is only one
bread; therefore, we, despite being many, are only one body.
For Paul the word Church as Body of Christ is not just any
analogy. It goes far beyond a comparison. "Why do you persecute
me?"
Christ attracts us continually to his Body, he builds his Body
from the Eucharistic center, which for Paul is the center of
Christian existence, in virtue of which all, as well as each
individual can experience in a totally personal way: "He has
loved me and given himself up for me."
I would like to conclude with a later word of St. Paul, an
exhortation to Timothy from prison, in face of death. "Endure
with me sufferings for the Gospel," said the apostle to his
disciple. This sentence, which is at the end of the roads
traveled by the apostle as a testament, leads us back to the
beginning of his mission. While, after his encounter with the
Risen One, the blind Paul was in his room in Damascus, Ananias
received the order to go where the feared persecutor was and lay
his hands on him, so that he would recover his sight.
To Ananias' objection that this Saul was a dangerous persecutor
of Christians, this answer was given: "This man must take my
name to the Gentiles, to kings and to the children of Israel. I
will show him all he will have to suffer for my name."
The task of proclamation and the call to suffering for Christ
are inseparably together. The call to be teacher of the Gentiles
is at the same time and intrinsically a call to suffering in
communion with Christ, who has redeemed us through his passion.
In a world in which lying is powerful, truth is paid for with
suffering. He who wishes to avoid suffering, to keep it far from
himself, will have pushed away life itself and its grandeur; he
cannot be a servant of truth and thus a servant of faith. There
is no love without suffering, without the suffering of denying
ourselves, of the transformation and purification of the "I" for
true freedom.
Wherever there is nothing worth suffering for, life itself also
loses its value. The Eucharist -- center of our Christian being
-- is based on the sacrifice of Jesus for us; it was born from
the suffering of the love that found its culmination on the
cross. We live from this love that gives itself. This gives us
the courage and strength to suffer with Christ and for him, thus
knowing that precisely in this way our life becomes great,
mature and true.
In the light of all of St. Paul's letters we see how on his
journey as teacher of the Gentiles, the prophecy of Ananias was
fulfilled at the hour of the calling: "I will show him all that
he will have to suffer for my name." His suffering makes him
credible as teacher of truth, which does not seek its own
benefit, its own glory or personal pleasure, but is committed to
him who loved us and gave himself up for all of us.
At this hour in which we thank the Lord for having called Paul,
making him the light of the Gentiles and teacher of us all, we
pray: Give us also today the testimony of the Resurrection,
touched by your love, and [make us] able to carry the light of
the Gospel in our time. St. Paul, pray for us. Amen.
[Translation by ZENIT]
Look
at the One they Pierced!
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