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Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul
29 June 2008
Praised be Jesus Christ! Now and forever!
Dear Friends in Christ,
Each year in the liturgical calendar, since at least A.D. 258, the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul is kept on June 29th, and this year’s celebration of the solemnity of the two apostles marks the beginning of the Pauline Year which will conclude on 29 June 2009. Pope Benedict XVI has convoked this Pauline Year to help the entire Church know more deeply and understand more clearly the life and work of the Apostle to the Gentiles, and in the coming months we will seek to do this in a variety of ways at St. Mary’s.
Saul of Tarsus (as he was known by his Hebrew name) was born to a Jewish family from Galilee, and he was of the tribe of Benjamin. Though he was a Roman citizen and lived in modern Turkey during his early years, Paul (as he was known by his Latin name) was a devout Jew who was sent to Jerusalem by his parents to study in the famous school of Rabbi Gamaliel. There Paul learned the Hebrew Scriptures and became a master of the Jewish tradition, a zealous Pharisee, and he might have spent his life as a rabbi serving a Jewish congregation, except that on a trip to Damascus to arrest Christians for blasphemy, Paul met the Lord Jesus Christ and his life was forever changed.
The conversion of St. Paul is described in the Acts of the Apostles three times (Acts 9: 1-19; 22: 3-21; and 26: 9-23), and as we begin this Pauline Year, I encourage everyone to read these three accounts of Paul’s first encounter with Jesus Christ. For us as for Paul, being a follower of the Lord Jesus must begin with conversion, with the decision to change our lives because we have met the Christ of God and are called by Him to the Way of the Cross. All of the extraordinary work that Paul accomplished in his three missionary journeys and the writing of his New Testament letters flowed from his constant communion with the Lord Jesus, a communion dependent upon a never-ending process of continual conversion.
A good summary of the life and work of St. Paul can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia, available online at www.newadvent.org. Another invaluable source of information is Scott Hahn’s website for the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology found at www.salvationhistory.com. I hope you will use these websites and other resources during this Pauline Year to acquire an ever deeper understanding of the life and ministry of the Teacher of the Nations, the Apostle Paul. But there is no substitute for sitting alone in a quiet place with your own Bible to study and pray with the Word of God revealed in the writings of St. Paul.
St. Paul the Apostle, pray for us!
Father Newman