|
THE YEAR OF PAUL
His Holiness, Benedict XVI has
declared the year between June 28, 2008 and June 29, 2009 a special year of
grace commemorating the life of Saint
Paul.
Saint
John Bosco Parish is currently making plans to join the UniversalChurch
in celebrating the second millennium of Saint
Paul,
Apostle. The Celebrations begin June 28, 2008 and close June 29, 2009. This
website will help us see what is happening in Rome
for this important Pauline Year of Grace.
http://www.annopaulino.org
Look forward to these
events at the Bosco
· Opening
Mass, June 29, 2008, 11am
· Solemn
Vespers,
June 29, 2008 at 4pm
· Closing
Mass, June
28, 2009 at TBA
· Missionary
Walk in the Footsteps of Paul,
Advent & Lent
· Catechesis
on Paul's Letters via
small group bible study groups Tuesday Nights at 7pm and Friday Nights at 7pm
place TBA
· For
updates on our celebrations, consult Father Cioppi’s website at: www.saintjohnbosco.org,
The Pope has granted
special plenary indulgences for the Pauline Year so that the faithful may
‘renew and strengthen, with ever increasing fervour on this happy and holy
occasion, their intentions for divine salvation,’ may ‘honour the blessed
Apostle Paul’ and may be encouraged ‘gently to bear fruits of good works.’
This is the essence
of a decree published on the eve of Pentecost, Saturday May 10th,
by the Apostolic Penitentiary ‘charged by the Pope to prepare and issue the
document.’ The indulgences, which will be valid ‘throughout the Pauline Year’
from June 28th 2008 to June 29th 2009, can be granted
first of all to ‘those individual Christians who are truly repentant and, duly
purified through the Sacrament of Penance and restored through Holy Communion,
make a pious pilgrimage to the Papal Basilica of St Paul on the Via Ostiense
and pray according to the intentions of the Holy Father.’ Down the centuries,
the Popes have always granted plenary indulgences to the faithful visiting the
basilica on any occasion and instructions on how to receive one are available
to all in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. These special indulgences for
the Pauline Year ‘can be received both for the faithful and for the deceased’
but only ‘once a day’ and ‘by observing the conditions and acts of devotion
clearly specified in the decree.’
Furthermore a plenary
indulgence can also be granted to those Christian faithful of the various
local Churches ‘in all sacred places on the days of the solemn opening and
closing of the Pauline Year’ and ‘on other days determined by the Ordinary of
that place, that is the Bishop’ as well as to ‘the faithful confined by
sickness or other legitimate or relevant reasons…as long as they unite
themselves spiritually with one of the Jubilee celebrations in honour of St
Paul, offering to God their prayers and their suffering for the unity of all
Christians.’
To begin our preparation, we will
publish four talks given by the Pope during his regular Wednesday audiences in Rome,
beginning October 25, 2006. These talks can be found on the Vatican
website (www.vatican.va). The third talk is titled,
Paul – the Spirit
in our hearts
(General Audience,
Wednesday November 15th, 2006)
Dear Brothers and
Sisters
Today too, as in our
last two Catecheses, we return to St
Paul
and his thought. We have before us a giant, not only in terms of his actual
apostolate but also of his extraordinarily profound and stimulating
theological teaching.
After meditating last
time on what Paul wrote about the central place that Jesus Christ occupies in
our life of faith, today let us look at what he said about the Holy Spirit and
about his presence in us, because here too, the Apostle has something very
important to teach us.
We know what St Luke
told us of the Holy Spirit from his description of the event of Pentecost in
the Acts of the Apostles. The Spirit of Pentecost brought with him a
strong impulse to take on the commitment of the mission in order to witness to
the Gospel on the highways of the world.
Indeed, the Acts
of the Apostles relates a whole series of missions the Apostles carried
out, first in Samaria,
then on the coastal strip of Palestine,
then towards Syria.
Above all, the three great missionary journeys of Paul are recounted, as I
recalled at one of our previous Wednesday meetings.
In his Letters,
however, St
Paul
also spoke to us of the Spirit from another angle. He did not end by
describing solely the dynamic and active dimension of the Third Person of the
Blessed Trinity, but also analyzed his presence in the lives of Christians,
which marks their identity.
In other words, in
Paul´s reflection on the Spirit he not only explained his influence on the action
of Christians, but also on their being. Indeed, it is he who said that
the Spirit of God dwells in us (cf. Rom 8: 9; I Cor 3: 16) and that "God has
sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts" (Gal 4: 6).
In Paul´s opinion,
therefore, the Spirit stirs us to the very depths of our being. Here are some
of his words on this subject which have an important meaning: "For the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and
death... you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but
you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, "Abba! Father!´, it is
the Spirit himself" (Rom 8: 2, 15) who speaks in us because, as children, we
can call God "Father".
Thus, we can see
clearly that even before he does anything, the Christian already possesses a
rich and fruitful interiority, given to him in the Sacraments of Baptism and
Confirmation, an interiority which establishes him in an objective and
original relationship of sonship with God. This is our greatest dignity: to be
not merely images but also children of God. And it is an invitation to live
our sonship, to be increasingly aware that we are adoptive sons in God´s great
family. It is an invitation to transform this objective gift into a subjective
reality, decisive for our way of thinking, acting and being.
God considers us his
children, having raised us to a similar if not equal dignity to that of Jesus
himself, the one true Son in the full sense. Our filial condition and trusting
freedom in our relationship with the Father is given or restored to us in him.
We thus discover that
for Christians, the Spirit is no longer only the "Spirit of God", as he is
usually described in the Old Testament and as people continue to repeat in
Christian language (cf. Gn 41: 38; Ex 31: 3; I Cor 2: 11, 12; Phil 3: 3;
etc.). Nor is he any longer simply a "Holy Spirit" generically understood, in
the manner of the Old Testament (cf. Is 63: 10, 11; Ps 51[50]: 13), and of
Judaism itself in its writings (Qumran, rabbinism).
Indeed, the
confession of an original sharing in this Spirit by the Risen Lord, who
himself became a "life-giving Spirit" (I Cor 15: 45), is part of the
specificity of the Christian faith.
For this very reason,
St Paul spoke directly of the "Spirit of Christ" (Rom 8: 9), of the "Spirit of
his Son" (cf. Gal 4: 6) or of the "Spirit of Jesus Christ" (Phil 1: 19). It is
as though he wanted to say that not only is God the Father visible in the Son
(cf. Jn 14: 9), but that the Spirit of God also expresses himself in the life
and action of the Crucified and Risen Lord!
Paul teaches us
another important thing: he says that there is no true prayer without the
presence of the Spirit within us. He wrote: "The Spirit helps us in our
weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself
intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the
hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit
intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (Rom 8: 26-27).
It is as if to say
that the Holy Spirit, that is, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, is
henceforth as it were the soul of our soul, the most secret part of our being,
from which an impulse of prayer rises ceaselessly to God, whose words we
cannot even begin to explain.
In fact, the Spirit,
ever alert within us, completes what is lacking in us and offers to the Father
our worship as well as our deepest aspirations.
This, of course,
requires a degree of great and vital communion with the Spirit. It is an
invitation to be increasingly sensitive, more attentive to this presence of
the Spirit in us, to transform it into prayer, to feel this presence and thus
to learn to pray, to speak to the Father as children in the Holy Spirit.
There is also another
typical aspect of the Spirit which St
Paul
teaches us: his connection with love. Thus, the Apostle wrote: "Hope does not
disappoint us, because God´s love has been poured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5: 5).
In my Encyclical
Letter Deus
Caritas Est, I cited a most eloquent sentence of St
Augustine: "If you see charity, you see the Trinity" (n. 19), and I continued
by explaining: "The Spirit, in fact, is that interior power which harmonizes
[believers´] hearts with Christ´s Heart and moves them to love their brethren
as Christ loved them" (ibid.). The Spirit immerses us in the very
rhythm of divine life, which is a life of love, enabling us to share
personally in relations between the Father and the Son.
It is
not without significance that when Paul lists the various elements that
constitute the fruit of the Spirit he puts love first: "the fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, peace", etc. (Gal 5: 22).
And since by
definition, love unites, this means first of all that the Spirit is the
creator of communion within the Christian community, as we say at the
beginning of Mass, borrowing Paul´s words: "... may the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit [that is, what he brings about] be with you all" (II Cor 13: 14).
Furthermore, however,
it is also true that the Spirit stimulates us to weave charitable relations
with all people. Therefore, when we love we make room for the Spirit and give
him leeway to express himself fully within us.
We thus understand
why Paul juxtaposes in the same passage of his Letter to the Romans the
two exhortations: "Be aglow with the Spirit" and "Repay no one evil for evil"
(Rom 12: 11, 17).
Finally,
according to St
Paul,
the Spirit is a generous downpayment given to us by God himself as a deposit
and at the same time, a guarantee of our future inheritance (cf. II Cor 1: 22;
5: 5; Eph 1: 13-14).
We therefore learn
from Paul that the Spirit´s action directs our life towards the great values
of love, joy, communion and hope. It is our task to experience this every day,
complying with the inner promptings of the Spirit and helped in our
discernment by the Apostle´s enlightened guidance.
| 
