The Year of St. Paul began this past weekend. The jubilee, which will  commemorate the life, teachings and missionary spirit of the Apostle, will through June 29, 2009, to mark the approximately 2,000th anniversary of the saint’s birth.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted marked the beginning of the Pauline year by celebrating Mass with local Catholics at St. Paul Parish June 29. The following is his homily from that Mass.

- JD

Vitality and Joy

St. Paul, Convert and Apostle

Frank J. Sheed wrote, “We can gain 2 things from meeting the saints: relief from monotony, and contact with vitality.”

Something about saints attracts the eye, not the eye that looks for the superficial but the eye that looks for integrity and life, the eye that seeks what is good and true, beautiful and right.

Saints are the opposite of monotony. They take the road less traveled, a road marked by the adventure of obedience to God. This certainly is the case of St. Peter, and even more, that of St. Paul. They did not follow their own feelings, nor the fads and fashions of their day. Instead, they had the humility and courage to leave behind their own plans and accept the plans of God, that is accept a mission from God.

The word “mission” gets used a lot these days. From sport stars to corporate executives, from elected officials to employees at Wal-Mart, people say they are “on a mission.” Often, however, what they are “on” is the opposite of a true mission. The word “mission” is derived from the Latin verb “missum” — to be sent. A mission comes from some one else. You don’t create it for yourself. What matters for someone with an authentic mission are not his own plans but the plans of the one who sent him. This is what Jesus is getting at when he says (Jn 15:16), “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit.” Both Peter and Paul rejoiced in these words of the Master. St. Paul, at one point in his life, had a twisted notion of mission. He saw himself as a self-appointed destroyer of Christianity. In his “self-appointed” mission, he participated in the martyrdom of St. Stephen. He sought out the followers of Christ in their homes and as they gathered to pray; he had them arrested and thrown into prison, even those living beyond Judah and Samaria.

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. 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. And so, years later we find St. Paul writing to the Corinthians (I Cor 9:16ff), “If I preach the Gospel, this is no reason for me to boast, for an obligation has been imposed on me, and woe to me if I do not preach it!”

Why do we begin today a Year of St. Paul? Why did the Successor of St. Peter, Pope Benedict XVI, invite the Church, for the next 12 months, to honor this Apostle to the Nations? For several good reasons:

1. First, because this marks 2000 years since his birth, and St. Paul is far better known today than he was at the time of his death. The Church will be enriched by celebration his 2000th birthday.
2. Second, because he teaches us about conversion, which is the fundamental path to holiness of life. Isn’t it remarkable that we celebrate on January 25th, not the Feast of St. Paul but the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul? For he would never have been remembered, would never have become a saint, much less an Apostle, had he not humbly accepted from God the grace of conversion.
   Nothing so deeply transforms one’s life as a personal encounter with Christ. Christianity is far more than an ideal, far more than an institution or society. It is an event, an encounter with the living Christ. That is what our hearts desire above all else, to meet and to be embraced by the love of our Savior.
   Still, for all its magnificence, this loving encounter is not enough. We need to respond to this gift. We need to follow Christ as He leads us along the path of conversion, communion and solidarity. Perhaps the hardest part is humbly allowing the Lord to show us our own sinfulness, to teach us our need for a Savior, and to bring us to seek forgiveness from the heart.
3. The third reason for honoring St. Paul is to deepen our love for the word of God. No saint is more enthusiastic about God’s word than St. Paul.
   St. Paul boasted about the hardships he endured for the sake of teaching the Gospel. What would discourage you and me and cause us to complain or even give up in disgust were things of joy for St. Paul. So, he writes to the Ephesians (Eph 3:7ff), “Through the gift God in His goodness bestowed on me by the exercise of His power, I became a minister of the Gospel. To me, the least of all believers, was given the grace to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ…Hence I beg you not be disheartened by the trials I endure for you; they are for your glory.”
   When St. Paul writes to Timothy, whom he had consecrated a bishop, he urges him to make the word of God his top priority. He writes (2 Tim 4:2ff), “I charge you to preach the word, to say with this task whether convenient or inconvenient—correcting, reproving, appealing—constantly teaching and never losing patience. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but, following their own desires, will surround themselves with teachers who tickle their ears. They will stop listening to the truth and will wander off to fables. As for you, be steady and self-possessed; put up with hardship, perform your work as an evangelist.”
   These words have great meaning for all of us, for parents the first teachers of the faith for their children, for priests and deacons, for religious and laity. All of us find light and life through God’s word and have a responsibility to hand it one to others. St. Paul is a guide and inspiration in our task.
4. Fourth, St. Paul inspires us to work for reconciliation, within our families and parishes, within our communities and between nations. The Lord sent Paul to communities that were torn apart by jealousy and anger, by factions and false teachings. He never let this discourage him. On the contrary, he constantly reminded the people that Christ came into the world to forgive sins and to bring back into unity what had been divided and torn apart. He writes (2 Cor 5:18ff), “God has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. I mean that God, in Christ, was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s transgressions against them, and that He has entrusted the message of reconciliation to us. This makes us ambassadors for Christ, God as it were appealing through us. We implore you, in Christ’s name: be reconciled to God.”
   This Year of St. Paul is a time to reconcile then with anyone with whom we are at odds, within the family or among friends, in the neighborhood or in the parish. It is a time to rediscover that blessing of having our sins forgiven in the Sacrament of Confession.
5. Fifth, the Year of St. Paul is a time to renew our hope. All around us are things that could make us despair, events of great tragedy and sorrow, situations of injustice and sin. We cannot close our eyes to these realities and the suffering that they engender. But we shall never be an instrument of peace without being grounded in hope.

St. Paul was firmly anchored in hope because he was so deeply convinced about the love of God. And that is also the basis of our hope. Thus, St. Paul writes to the Romans (Rom 8:35ff), “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Trial, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? …Yet in all this we are more than conquerors because of Him who has loved us. For I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor powers, neither height nor depth nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”

May the Year of St. Paul deepen our love for God and may it renew our hope.