News Entry
Anno Paolino – 2008-2009 – The Year of Paul
Date Posted: Thursday 15 January 2009
The Conversion of Saint Paul, 1600-1601 by Michelangelo Caravaggio
Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
2008-09 has been proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI as The Pauline Year. It will have a particular ecumenical dimension and follow the example of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Designed to celebrate the bimillennium of the birth of Saint Paul, which historians place between the years 7 and 10 AD, the Pauline Year takes place between 28 June 2008 and 29 June 2009. Proclaiming the year, Pope Benedict said, ‘there is one particular aspect to which careful attention must be paid during the various celebrations of this bimillennium of Paul’s birth: I am referring to the ecumenical dimension. The Apostle of the Gentiles, who was particularly committed to bringing the Good News to all people, gave everything he had for unity and harmony among all Christians. May he guide and protect us in this bimillennium celebration, helping us to go forward in the humble and sincere search for full unity between all the members of the mystical body of Christ.’
Our principal celebration of the Apostle to the Gentiles takes place on Sunday 25 January, the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. High Mass is celebrated at 10.30 am, including our Procession with the Icon of Paul. The Mass setting is WIdor’s Mass for double choir, and the choir will sing a new anthem, Let the people praise thee, a setting of psalm 67 by William Mathias. Solemn Evensong and Benediction are offered at 6.30 pm.
The Apostle to the Gentiles
Paul of Tarsus (originally Saul) did not know Jesus during his lifetime like the other Twelve Apostles but was the first to have as his only experience that of the Risen Christ. Born in Tarsus, he was sent as a young man to Jerusalem where he was given a strict training in the Law at the school of Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder. After several years there he returned to Tarsus and so was not present in Jerusalem during Jesus’ preaching ministry but only returned to the city a few years after Christ’s passion. During this phase Saul was a fervent Pharisee: he witnessed the stoning of Stephen. Soon afterwards he was given the task of going to Damascus to imprison the Christians there, since he was zealous and firmly against the religion of Jesus which was beginning to spread and establish itself.
His conversion took place on the road to Damascus when a light from heaven suddenly surrounded him and falling from his horse, he heard a voice saying ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ Saul was blinded, stunned by what had happened: then for three days he waited without eating or drinking. He decided to withdraw into the desert and spent three years there rethinking his life and meditating at length on the gift he had received. Comforted by this light of truth, he returned to Damascus and began preaching with enthusiasm, provoking anger amongst the pagans who considered him a renegade and tried to kill him with the result that he was forced to flee the city.
He took refuge in Jerusalem and stayed a couple of weeks there meeting Peter, the leader of the Apostles. The Apostles understood and stayed with him for many hours each day, talking to him about Jesus. But the Christian community in Jerusalem did not trust him, mindful of the vicious persecutions he had inflicted on them, and it was only through the guarantees given by Barnabas, a formerly influential Levite, that their doubts were removed and he was accepted. From 39 AD to 43 AD we have no news of him until Barnabas, invited by the Apostles to organise the emerging Christian community in Antioch, came to Paul and asked him to come too. It is at this point that Paul abandons forever the name Saul because he was convinced that his mission was not so much among the Jews as among those other peoples whom the Jews referred to as ‘Gentiles.’ It was in Antioch that the disciples of Christ were first known by the name ‘Christians.’
