Imitating St. Paul As He Imitated Christ
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - June 27, 2008
Tomorrow night, at the basilica built outside Rome's ancient walls over the tomb of the Apostle to the Gentiles, Pope Benedict will inaugurate the much-anticipated Year of St. Paul. Benedict decided to dedicate this year — which begins tomorrow and runs through June 29 next year — in order to celebrate St. Paul's 2000th birthday.
When governments declare a special day or year to commemorate a person or an event, it remains almost always honorific and on the periphery of people's attention and daily life. When the Church proclaims a liturgical year, however, it is meant to influence and enliven all aspects of the Church's life.
The celebration of St. Paul's birth is meant to help all Catholics reflect on the meaning of his life and the meaning and direction of our own. "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ," he wrote in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth (1 Cor 11:1). This year is a grace-filled occasion for the Catholics of the Diocese of Fall River to get to know St. Paul much more deeply, so that we might imitate him as he emulated the Lord.
If we do imitate him, this Pauline year will have several characteristics.
It will first be a year of deep conversion to Christ. St. Paul's famous conversion was not from a dissolute to a holy life, but from a false notion of a holy life to a true one. Prior to his metanoia, Saul had been Pharisaical Jew and believed that holiness came through one's own actions in rigorous adherence to the letter of the Mosaic Law. After the road to Damascus, he recognized that holiness is mostly God's work, not ours. Holiness is a life of faith in response to God's love. Holiness means allowing Christ to live and reign within. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me," he wrote to the Galatians, "and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me" (Gal 2:19-20).
The conversion called for in this Pauline year is to make Christ the center of one's whole life. For Paul, Christ was "the pearl of great price" that made everything else in his life pale in comparison: "I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil 3:8; cf. Mt 13:46). Paul's great anxiety was for Christians to make everything else distant second in comparison with the person of Christ. His prayer for us this year would doubtless be what he expressed several times to the early Christians: "My little children, I am in labor pains until Christ be formed in you" (Gal 4:19; cf. 1 Cor :4:14-15; 1 Thess 2:7-8).
Secondly, a year of St. Paul will be one dedicated to evangelization. More than any other figure in the history of the Church, St. Paul spread the Gospel. He brought it on foot to Antioch, Pisidia, Laconia, Galatia, Macedonia, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Berea, Athens, Melitus, Rome and probably Spain. Through his letters, he brought the message of Christ to many other communities as well. He acutely felt the pain of Jews living externally as he once did under the yoke of the Mosaic Law, and wanted to bring them the liberating good news of the law's fulfillment in Christ. He also hungered to preach Christ to the Gentiles so that they might know and love the one, true God. His motivation was simple: "The love of Christ impels us … so that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised" (2 Cor 5: 14-15). This year of St. Paul is gift for us to rekindle in our hearts this type of evangelical love.
Thirdly, a Pauline year will be a time for the study of Sacred Scripture. It obviously will include examination of his missionary journeys in the Acts of the Apostles and the great truths that the Holy Spirit inspired him to write in his letters. But it will also lead us to the Gospels — especially St. Luke's, which was based on the preaching of St. Paul — and to the Old Testament, which Paul knew intimately through his years at the feet of Rabbi Gamaliel and incorporated so brilliantly in his oral and written preaching. It's no coincidence that the upcoming October Synod for Bishops on the Word of God in the life and mission of the Church will take place during the Pauline Year. To take St. Paul seriously means to take Sacred Scripture seriously.
Fourthly, a truly Pauline year will lead to renewed appreciation for the gift of the Church in God's plans. There are many today who try to separate Christ from the Church he founded. Saul of Tarsus once did the same and persecuted the Church, thinking he was doing God's will. At his famous conversion, however, Paul recognized that Christ perfectly identified with his Church when he said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4). Paul spent the rest of his life preaching the connection between Christ and his Church. To the Corinthians, Ephesians and Colossians, he described the Church as Christ's own body (1 Cor 12:27; Eph 4:12; 5:30; Col 1:24). To the Ephesians, he also said that the Church was Christ's bride (Eph 5:21-33), made one in the one-flesh Eucharistic consummation of their loving union (1 Cor 10:17). St. Paul crisscrossed Asia and Europe to found Churches with a structure to keep us a loving Bride and a unified body.
Appreciating what the Church is will necessarily help make the Pauline year one dedicated to ecumenism. St. Paul has always been seen as the great ecumenical figure, held in great stature and esteem by all Christians and invoked as a special ecumenical patron. It's not by coincidence that the Pope marks the annual Octave of Christian Unity with an ecumenical prayer service around St. Paul's tomb. It's also not by coincidence that Benedict, whose foremost apostolic objective is the reunion of Christ's brothers and sisters, has convoked a year of St. Paul. For the last 2000 years, Paul has taught that Christ is not divided, that "there is one body and one Spirit, … one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all" (Eph 4:3-4; 1 Cor 1:13). A Pauline year dedicated to conversion, to Christ, to the studying and spreading the Gospel, and to the meaning of the Church in God's plans, should flourish, please God, in ecumenical progress.
Finally, a Pauline Year will be waste of time unless all of these other dimensions culminate in making this year a Year of Love. In a very moving part of his first letter to the Corinthians, he wrote: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing" (1 Cor 13:1-3). With him we could say that if this Pauline Year does not culminate in our growing in the love of God and, in God, for others, then it would have just produced noise — gongs and cymbals — but we would have gained nothing of ultimate value.
As we begin the Year of St. Paul tomorrow, we ask the great Doctor of the Gentiles to intercede for all of us in the Diocese that we might imitate his love for the Lord, for the Church and for others. And we ask the Lord to give us a double portion of his zeal.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
