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Pope Benedict XVI’s long trip to Sydney reminds me of how St. Paul
traveled the known world of his time to bring Christ’s message to
the Gentiles.
None of the national dailies has given the
news the attention it deserves that Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the
inauguration of Pauline Year on June 28. He announced that June 28,
2008 to June 29, 2009 is the Year of St. Paul, the Apostle to the
Gentiles, marking the global celebration of the 2,000th anniversary
of his birth.
The Pope made the proclamation at the Basilica
of St. Paul Outside the Walls fittingly with Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew of the Orthodox Church beside him and patriarchs of
the Eastern Churches and representatives of other Christian Churches
and communities in attendance. The Pope stressed St. Paul as a
unifying force for all Christians and called for this Pauline Year
to be marked by Christian unity.
“Bring us back together again, from all our
divisions” was Benedict XVI’s prayer for Christian unity.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew also called for unity in the talk
he delivered after the Pope.
Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople
(officially Istanbul, Turkey), also known by the title Archbishop of
Constantinople, is the primary spiritual leader of the Orthodox
Christian world. He and the late Pope John Paul II worked together
to bring the Orthodox and Catholic Churches closer to total reunion.
He and Pope Benedict are now continuing that effort.
Before entering the Basilica of St Paul’s
Outside the Walls, the Pope, accompanied by representatives of other
Churches, walked in procession around the four-sided portico of the
basilica. By the Pauline Door, Benedict XVI lit the first candle of
the brazier that will remain lit for the entire Pauline Year, until
June 29, 2009.
After the Pope, the gesture was repeated by the
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the representatives of the
other Churches.
Damascus and Turkey
Christian communities—Catholic, Orthodox and
Protestant—also celebrated the inauguration of the Pauline year in
Damascus. The proclamation of the Year of St. Paul was made in the
name of all the Christian communities by the Greek Orthodox
patriarch of Antioch. The Melkite Catholic patriarch of Antioch,
Gregory III, was in Rome with the Pope and Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew at St. Paul’s Outside the Walls.
In Turkey, at the modern-day location of Tarsus,
the city of St Paul’s birth, Pauline Year was opened a few days
ahead—on June 22nd. There are officially no Christians or churches
in Tarsus. Orthodox and Roman Catholics have requested the Turkish
government to allow the church of St. Paul, now a museum, to be used
for celebrating the Pauline Year. The same requests were made for
Turkey’s other Christian churches.
Who is Paul?
Pope Benedict’s answer is: “Teacher of the
gentiles, apostle and proclaimer of Jesus Christ . . . is how he
characterises himself in a retrospective look at the course of his
life. But with this, our attention is not directed only to the past.
‘Teacher of the gentiles’ —this title is open to the future,
to all peoples and all generations. Paul is not for us [only] a
figure of the past, whom we recall with veneration. He is also a
teacher, apostle and proclaimer of Jesus Christ for us as well. We
have therefore gathered not to reflect on a history left behind
forever. Paul wants to speak with us—today.”
“In the letter to the Galatians,” the
Pope’s take on Paul continues, “he provided for us a very
personal profession of faith, in which he opens his heart to the
reader of all times, and reveals the deep driving force of his life.
‘I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given
himself up for me’ (Gal. 2:20). Everything that Paul does begins
from this center. His faith is the experience of being loved by
Jesus Christ in a completely personal way; it is the awareness of
the fact that Christ has faced death not for some anonymous person,
but out of love for him— for Paul—and that, as the Risen One, he
still loves him. Christ has given himself for him. His faith comes
from being transfixed by the love of Jesus Christ, a love that
shakes him to his core and transforms him. His faith is not a
theory, an opinion about God and the world. His faith is the impact
of the love of God on his heart. And thus his faith is itself love
for Jesus Christ.”
Love and law
“This love is now the ‘law’ of his life
and in this very way it is the freedom of his life. He speaks and
acts on the basis of the responsibility of love. Freedom and
responsibility are here united in an inseparable way. Because he
stands in the responsibility of love, he is free; because he is
someone who loves, he lives completely in the responsibility of this
love and does not take freedom as the pretext for willfulness and
egoism.”
If only 50 top leaders of our country had this
Pauline love of Christ, what a great First World state the
Philippines would be.
rqb@manilatimes.net
rq_bas@yahoo.com
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