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This year the Church will mark St. Paul’s missionary energy and spirit of surrender with a special jubilee year. The Pauline Year will run from June 28 of this year to June 29, 2009, to mark the approximately 2,000th anniversary of the saint’s birth.

Pope Benedict XVI opened the year of St. Paul at an evening prayer service June 28 in the Rome Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. He said the Apostle’s courageous witness to the faith should serve as a model for contemporary Christians.

“Paul is not only a figure of the past that we remember with veneration. He is also our teacher, an apostle and a herald of Jesus Christ for us, too,” the pope said.

In Phoenix, Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted marked the beginning of the Pauline year by celebrating Mass with local Catholics at St. Paul Parish June 29.

“St. Paul, at one point in his life, had a twisted notion of mission. He saw himself as a self-appointed destroyer of Christianity,” the bishop said in his homily, noting that the Apostle participated in the martyrdom of St. Stephen before his conversion.

“But Christ had mercy on St. Paul. He stopped him abruptly in his tracks. He knocked him to the ground. He made him temporarily blind — all of this as Paul was rushing off to Damascus to carry out his self-appointed mission,” he said. “Then, the Lord showed him his spiritual blindness, and opened his eyes to the truth of the Gospel. Saul, to his credit, humbly accepted this gift of conversion, and accepted his real mission from God.”

To read more about the Pauline year, visit our Web site, www.catholicsun.org.

You’ll find Bishop Olmsted’s letter about the Pauline year, an overview and a review of a recent book on St. Paul. In the bishop’s letter you’ll find information about plenary indulgences associated with the Pauline year, and pilgrimage sites in the Diocese of Phoenix. (Also see the Vatican decree on the special indulgences granted during the Pauline year.)

Catholic News Service posted a list of resources for the year of St. Paul. The diocesan Department of Family Catechesis also has a Web site with resources.

- JD