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Pope Benedict XVI- Homilies |
"The
World Cannot Be Renewed Without New People"
Homily at the Close of the Pauline Year
H.H. Benedict XVI
Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls
June 28, 2009
Your Eminences,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
Distinguished Members of the Delegation of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I address my cordial greeting to each one of you. In particular, I
greet the Cardinal Archpriest of this Basilica and his
collaborators, I greet the Abbot and the Benedictine monastic
community; I also greet the Delegation of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The commemorative year for the birth of St Paul ends this evening.
We have gathered at the tomb of the Apostle whose sarcophagus,
preserved beneath the papal altar, was recently the object of a
careful scientific analysis. A tiny hole was drilled in the
sarcophagus, which in so many centuries had never been opened, in
order to insert a special probe which revealed traces of a precious
purple-coloured linen fabric, with a design in gold leaf, and a blue
fabric with linen threads.
Grains of red incense and protein and chalk substances were also
found. In addition, minute fragments of bone were sent for carbon-14
testing by experts unaware of their provenance. The fragments proved
to belong to someone who had lived between the first and second
centuries. This would seem to confirm the unanimous and undisputed
tradition which claims that these are the mortal remains of the
Apostle Paul. All this fills our hearts with profound emotion.
In recent months, many people have followed the paths of the Apostle
the exterior and especially the interior paths on which he travelled
in his lifetime: the road to Damascus towards his encounter with the
Risen One; the routes of the Mediterranean world which he crossed
with the torch of the Gospel, encountering contradiction and
adherence until his martyrdom, through which he belongs for ever to
the Church of Rome. It was to her that he also addressed his most
important Letter.
The Pauline Year is drawing to a close but what will remain a part
of Christian existence is the journey with Paul with him and thanks
to him getting to know Jesus, and, like the Apostle, being
enlightened and transformed by the Gospel. And always, going beyond
the circle of believers, he remains the "teacher of the Gentiles",
who seeks to bring the message of the Risen One to them all, because
Christ has known and loved each one; he has died and risen for them
all.
Therefore let us too listen to him at this time when we are solemnly
beginning the Feast of the two Apostles who were bound to one
another by a close bond.
It is part of the structure of Paul's Letters always in reference to
the particular place and situation that they first of all explain
the mystery of Christ, they teach faith. The second part treats
their application to our lives: what ensues from this faith? How
does it shape our existence, day by day?
In the Letter to the Romans, this second part begins in chapter 12,
in which the Apostle briefly sums up the essential nucleus of
Christian existence in the first two verses. What does St Paul say
to us in that passage?
First of all he affirms, as a fundamental thing, that a new way of
venerating God began with Christ a new form of worship. It consists
in the fact that the living person himself becomes adoration,
"sacrifice", even in his own body. It is no longer things that are
offered to God. It is our very existence that must become praise of
God. But how does this happen?
In the second verse we are given the answer: "Do not be conformed to
this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you
may prove what is the will of God..." (12: 2).
The
two decisive words of this verse are "transformed" and "renewal". We
must become new people, transformed into a new mode of existence.
The world is always in search of novelty because, rightly, it is
always dissatisfied with concrete reality.
Paul tells us: the world cannot be renewed without new people. Only
if there are new people will there also be a new world, a renewed
and better world. In the beginning is the renewal of the human
being. This subsequently applies to every individual. Only if we
ourselves become new does the world become new. This also means that
it is not enough to adapt to the current situation.
The Apostle exhorts us to non-conformism. In our Letter he says: we
should not submit to the logic of our time. We shall return to this
point, reflecting on the second text on which I wish to meditate
with you this evening.
The Apostle's "no" is clear and also convincing for anyone who
observes the "logic" of our world. But to become new how can this be
done? Are we really capable of it? With his words on becoming new,
Paul alludes to his own conversion: to his encounter with the Risen
Christ, an encounter of which, in the Second Letter to the
Corinthians he says: "if anyone is in Christ, he is in a new
creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (5:17).
This encounter with Christ was so overwhelming for him that he said
of it: "I... died..." (Gal 2:19; cf. Rm 6).
He became new, another, because he no longer lived for himself and
by virtue of himself, but for Christ and in him. In the course of
the years, however, he also saw that this process of renewal and
transformation continues throughout life. We become new if we let
ourselves be grasped and shaped by the new Man, Jesus Christ. He is
the new Man par excellence. In him the new human existence became
reality and we can truly become new if we deliver ourselves into his
hands and let ourselves be moulded by him.
Paul makes this process of "recasting" even clearer by saying that
we become new if we transform our way of thinking. What has been
introduced here with "way of thinking" is the Greek term "nous". It
is a complex word. It may be translated as "spirit", "sentiments",
"reason", and precisely, also by "way of thinking".
Thus our reason must become new. This surprises us. We might have
expected instead that this would have concerned some attitude: what
we should change in our behaviour. But no: renewal must go to the
very core. Our way of looking at the world, of understanding reality
all our thought must change from its foundations. The reasoning of
the former person, the common way of thinking is usually directed to
possession, well-being, influence, success, fame and so forth. Yet
in this way its scope is too limited. Thus, in the final analysis,
one's "self" remains the centre of the world. We must learn to think
more profoundly. St Paul tells us what this means in the second part
of the sentence: it is necessary to learn to understand God's will,
so that it may shape our own will.
This is in order that we ourselves may desire what God desires,
because we recognize that what God wants is the beautiful and the
good. It is therefore a question of a turning point in our
fundamental spiritual orientation. God must enter into the horizon
of our thought: what he wants and the way in which he conceived of
the world and of me. We must learn to share in the thinking and the
will of Jesus Christ. It is then that we will be new people in whom
a new world emerges.
Paul illustrates the same idea of a necessary renewal of our way of
being human in two passages of his Letter to the Ephesians; let us
therefore reflect on them briefly.
In the Letter's fourth chapter, the Apostle tells us that with
Christ we must attain adulthood, a mature faith. We can no longer be
"children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
doctrine..." (4:14).
Paul wants Christians to have a "responsible" and "adult faith". The
words "adult faith" in recent decades have formed a widespread
slogan. It is often meant in the sense of the attitude of those who
no longer listen to the Church and her Pastors but autonomously
choose what they want to believe and not to believe hence a
do-it-yourself faith. And it is presented as a "courageous" form of
self-expression against the Magisterium of the Church.
In fact, however, no courage is needed for this because one may
always be certain of public applause. Rather, courage is needed to
adhere to the Church's faith, even if this contradicts the "logic"
of the contemporary world. This is the non-conformism of faith which
Paul calls an "adult faith". It is the faith that he desires.
On the other hand, he describes chasing the winds and trends of the
time as infantile. Thus, being committed to the inviolability of
human life from its first instant, thereby radically opposing the
principle of violence also precisely in the defence of the most
defenceless human creatures is part of an adult faith.
It is part of an adult faith to recognize marriage between a man and
a woman for the whole of life as the Creator's ordering, newly
re-established by Christ. Adult faith does not let itself be carried
about here and there by any trend. It opposes the winds of fashion.
It knows that these winds are not the breath of the Holy Spirit; it
knows that the Spirit of God is expressed and manifested in
communion with Jesus Christ.
However, here too Paul does not stop at saying "no", but rather
leads us to the great "yes". He describes the mature, truly adult
faith positively with the words: "speaking the truth in love" (cf.
Eph 4:15).
The new way of thinking, given to us by faith, is first and foremost
a turning towards the truth. The power of evil is falsehood. The
power of faith, the power of God, is the truth. The truth about the
world and about ourselves becomes visible when we look to God. And
God makes himself visible to us in the Face of Jesus Christ.
In looking at Christ, we recognize something else: truth and love
are inseparable. In God both are inseparably one; it is precisely
this that is the essence of God. For Christians, therefore, truth
and love go together. Love is the test of truth. We should always
measure ourselves anew against this criterion, so that truth may
become love and love may make us truthful.
Another important thought appears in this verse of St Paul. The
Apostle tells us that by acting in accordance with truth in love, we
help to ensure that all things (ta pánta) the universe may grow,
striving for Christ.
On the basis of his faith, Paul is not only concerned in our
personal rectitude nor with the growth of the Church alone. He is
interested in the universe: ta pánta. The ultimate purpose of
Christ's work is the universe the transformation of the universe, of
the whole human world, of all creation.
Those who serve the truth in love together with Christ contribute to
the true progress of the world. Yes, here it is quite clear that
Paul is acquainted with the idea of progress. Christ his life, his
suffering and his rising was the great leap ahead in the progress of
humanity, of the world. Now, however, the universe must grow in
accordance with him. Where the presence of Christ increases, therein
lies the true progress of the world. There, mankind becomes new and
thus the world is made new.
Paul makes the same thing clear from yet another different
perspective. In chapter three of the Letter to the Ephesians he
speaks to us of the need to be "strengthened... in the inner man"
(3:16). With this he takes up a subject that earlier, in a troubled
situation, he had addressed in the Second Letter to the Corinthians.
"Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being
renewed every day" (4:16). The inner person must be strengthened
this is a very appropriate imperative for our time, in which people
all too often remain inwardly empty and must therefore cling to
promises and drugs, which then result in a further growth of the
sense of emptiness in their hearts. This interior void the weakness
of the inner person is one of the great problems of our time.
Interiority must be reinforced the perceptiveness of the heart; the
capacity to see and to understand the world and the person from
within, with one's heart. We are in need of reason illuminated by
the heart in order to learn to act in accordance with truth in love.
However, this is not realized without an intimate relationship with
God, without the life of prayer. We need the encounter with God that
is given to us in the sacraments. And we cannot speak to God in
prayer unless we let him speak first, unless we listen to him in the
words that he has given us.
In this regard Paul says to us: "Christ may dwell in your hearts
through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have
power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and
length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which
surpasses knowledge" (Eph 3:17ff.).
With these words Paul tells us that love sees beyond simple reason.
And he also tells us that only in communion with all the saints,
that is, in the great community of all believers and not against or
without it can we know the immensity of Christ's mystery.
He circumscribes this immensity with words meant to express the
dimensions of the cosmos: breadth, length and height and depth. The
mystery of Christ has a cosmic vastness; he did not belong only to a
specific group. The Crucified Christ embraces the entire universe in
all its dimensions. He takes the world in his hands and lifts it up
towards God.
Starting with St Irenaeus of Lyons thus from the second century the
Fathers have seen in these words on the breadth, length and height
and depth of Christ's love an allusion to the Cross.
In the Cross, Christ's love embraced the lowest depths the night of
death as well as the supreme heights, the loftiness of God himself.
And he took into his arms the breadth and the vastness of humanity
and of the world in all their distances. He always embraces the
universe all of us.
Let us pray the Lord to help us to recognize something of the
immensity of his love. Let us pray him that his love and his truth
may touch our hearts. Let us ask that Christ dwell in our hearts and
make us new men and women who act according to truth in love. Amen!
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