SS Peter and Paul 28 June 2008

Homily for the Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul and the Start of the Pauline Year Sunday 29 June 2008 This weekend the Holy Father proclaimed the opening of the Year of St Paul, because historians place St Paul’s birth at some time between AD 7 and AD 10 and so this special Pauline Year commemorates the 2000th anniversary of his birth. The Holy Father hopes that as this year unfolds we will find occasions to reflect more deeply on the person of St Paul, his life and his thought that we have preserved for us both indirectly in St Luke’s account of the Early Church in the book of Acts and directly in the Letters of St Paul that form such a major part of the New Testament. Because of all this information, Paul is the person in the New Testament times that we know most about- apart that is, from Our Lord himself. And these letters are in fact the earliest Christian writings we have, all of them written before the Gospels came to be written down. No wonder Pope Benedict once described St Paul in this way; “He shines like a star of the brightest magnitude in the Church’s history”. For me, part of the attraction of St Paul is that he is a follower of Our Lord who is exactly in our own position- remember he never met Jesus during Our Lord’s earthly life, unlike the other apostles who knew Jesus personally and who had been with him all through his ministry. We too have never met Jesus in the flesh, have we, our encounters with him are all of a supernatural nature- chiefly of course when we meet him in the sacraments, when he comes to us in Holy Communion and when we come to spend time alone with him before the Tabernacle and let him gaze upon us and speak to us. Probably, alas, our encounters with Our Lord in this way are not, or at least not often, of the dramatic nature of the great encounter that Paul- then known as Saul- had with the Risen Lord in the famous incident on the road to Damascus. Luke gives a full account of this decisive moment in Paul’s life, “when a light from Heaven flashed about him”. Paul himself is more reticent. In his Letter to his converts at Philippi he just refers to when “Christ made me his own”, in the Letter to the Galatians he says God “was pleased to reveal his Son to me” and in his second Letter to his converts in Corinth he says “it is the God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ who has shone in our hearts”. His experience of this supernatural encounter with Our Lord was so vivid to him that he asks them “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” How wonderful it would be if we too could sometimes feel all this fervour and conviction! If we reflect on what we are really doing when we come to communion, what is really happening on the altar at Mass, who we are really talking to when we lament our sins in the confessional, maybe we too could come away from receiving the sacraments feeling that “Christ has made me his own” and saying “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” We are always in a sense on the road to Damascus, going about our routines, caught up in all the concerns of our lives, usually to some extent in all the compromises of our lives, let’s face it- and the sacraments are there as so many possible lay-bys and halts on that road that is our daily life- can Jesus speak to us too when we come to Mass? Will we too when we drop into church for a few minutes before the Blessed Sacrament feel so drawn into the presence of Christ that we will sense a light from heaven flash about us? Or are there just too many distractions? Well, the other thing I really like about St Paul is that he is very frank with us about his frail human nature. He is certainly one of us, no superman! Listen to him writing to the church in Rome: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” Sounds familiar? That is certainly often my own situation- full of good intentions, then swept away by some old stupid habit of thought into the very behaviour that afterwards appals me. That is the dilemma of human nature isn’t it, that we all are familiar with, the fatal flaw that we know as original sin. Paul goes on: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do”. All of that makes Paul seem a very honest, ordinary human being, who has to battle with himself in order to be a faithful follower of Our Lord. And that is also our own position entirely, isn’t it. I leave to other occasions in the coming Pauline Year the various strands of St Paul’s theology; today as this momentous year in the Church’s history opens I want merely to remind us of how like us he is- a Christian, a follower of someone he has never met but only experienced in supernatural ways, a man caught up in the daily struggle within himself to be not just a follower, but a faithful follower, of Our Lord. As the Pauline Year unfolds may we share in some of St Paul’s experiences, may we too experience God shining into our hearts and know from our encounters with Our Lord in the sacramental life that “Christ has made me his own”. I close with the wish that St Paul enshrines in his first Letter to the Corinthians: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”. Amen.