VATICAN - For Saint Paul, Christ is “the standard to evaluate events and things, the purpose of every effort that he makes to announce the Gospel, the great passion that sustains his steps along the paths of the world.”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “Today I would like to speak of the teaching St. Paul left us about the centrality of the risen Christ in the mystery of salvation, about his Christology...Christ is for the Apostle the standard to evaluate events and things, the purpose of every effort that he makes to announce the Gospel, the great passion that sustains his steps along the paths of the world. And he is a living Christ, concrete.” With these words, the Holy Father Benedict XVI began his audience during the General Audience on Wednesday, October 22, in Saint Peter's Square.
Paul does not bother describing isolated facts from Jesus' life, the Holy Father explained, “His pastoral and theological work was so directed toward the edification of the nascent communities, that it was natural for him to concentrate everything on the announcement of Jesus Christ as 'Lord,' alive today and present among his own. Here we see the essentiality that is characteristic of Pauline Christology, which develops the depths of the mystery with a constant and precise concern: To announce, with certainty, Jesus and his teaching, but to announce above all the central reality of his death and resurrection as the culmination of his earthly existence and the root of the successive development of the whole Christian faith, of the whole reality of the Church. For the Apostle, the Resurrection is not an event in itself that is separated from the Death. The risen One is the same One who was crucified. The risen One also had his wounds.”
The Apostle Paul contemplates the mystery of the Crucified-Risen Lord and “through the sufferings endured by Christ in his humanity (earthly dimension) arrives to this eternal existence in which he is one with the Father (pre-temporal dimension).” These two dimensions were already present in the Old Testament, in the figure of Wisdom and the exaltation of he role of Wisdom pre-existent to the creation of the world. The Pope continued, saying, “The same wisdom texts that speak of the eternal pre-existence of Wisdom also speak of its descent, of the abasement of this Wisdom, which has made for itself a tent among men. Thus we can already feel resonate the words from the Gospel of John that speak of the tent of the flesh of the Lord.” Saint Paul, in his Christology “refers precisely to this wisdom perspective: He recognizes in Jesus the eternal Wisdom existing from all time, the Wisdom that descends and creates a tent among us,” and clarifies that “Christ, like Wisdom, can be rejected above all by the rulers of this age, such that in the plans of God a paradoxical situation is created: the cross, which will become the path of salvation for the whole human race.”
The Letter to the Philippians shows that “faith in the divinity of Christ is not a Hellenistic invention, arising after the earthly life of Christ, an invention that, forgetting his humanity, had divinized him. We see in reality that the early Judeo-Christianity believed in the divinity of Jesus. Moreover, we can say that the apostles themselves, in the great moments of the life of the Master, had understood that he was the Son of God.” The hymn from the Letter of the Philippians illustrates the principle moments of the journey undertaken by Christ: his pre-existence, his voluntary self-emptying to the point of self-humbling, the Father's response to the Son's humiliation. “What is impressive is the contrast between the radical abasement and the resulting glorification in the glory of God,” the Pope explained. “The initiative of abasement, of the radical humility of Christ, which contrasts with human pride, is really the expression of divine love; from it follows this elevation to heaven to which God attracts us with his love.”
Finally, the Pope made reference to the First Letter of Paul to Timothy, as an example of “other places in Pauline literature where the themes of the pre-existence and the descent of the Son of God to earth are united,” along with references to the Letters to the Colossians and Ephesians. “In the first, Christ is designated as the 'firstborn of all creation' (1:15-20). This word 'firstborn' implies that the first among many children, the first among many brothers and sisters, has lowered to draw us and make us brothers and sisters.” In the Letter to the Ephesians, there is a “beautiful exposition of the divine plan of salvation, when Paul says that in Christ, God wanted to recapitulate all things. Christ is the recapitulation of everything, he takes up everything and guides us to God. And thus is implied a movement of descent and ascent, inviting us to participate in his humility, that is, in his love for neighbor, so as to thus be participants in his glorification, making ourselves with him into sons in the Son.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 23/10/2008)