VATICAN - Benedict XVI closes the Year dedicated to St Paul who “ remains the ‘teacher of the nations, anxious to carry to all men and women the message of the Risen Lord, because Christ knows and loves them all and died and rose again for them ”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - In the early evening of Sunday June 28, the Holy Father, Benedict XVI went to the Basilica of Saint Paul to preside First Vespers of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul to close the Year of St Paul. “The year to commemorate the birth of St Paul closes this evening - the Pope said in his homily -. We are gathered here at the tomb of the Apostle whose sarcophagus, preserved under the papal altar, was recently the object of careful scientific examination … (which) would seem to confirm the unanimous and unquestioned tradition that these are indeed the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul. This fills our soul with profound emotion ”.
After recalling that in the past months many people have followed “the ways of the Apostle, exterior paths and still more the interior paths which he walked during his life ”, Benedict XVI underlined: “The Year of St Paul closes, but to walk with Paul and through him to come to know Jesus and like him be illuminated and transformed by the Gospel – this will always be part of the Christian life. He will remain, beyond the circle of believers, the 'teacher of the nations', anxious to carry to all men and women the message of the Risen Lord, because Christ knows and loves them all and died and rose again for them ”.
Dwelling on the second part of the Letter to the Romans, the first two verses of chapter 12, the Pope explained that in this passage St Paul “first of all affirms, as something fundamental, that with Christ a new manner of venerating God has started,– a new form of worship. It consists in the fact that living man becomes himself adoration, a ‘sacrifice’ even of the body. Things are no longer offered to God. Our very life should offer praise to God ”. This is possible, according to St Paul, if we become “new persons, transformed in a new manner of living … speaking about becoming new persons, Paul alludes to his own conversion: his encounter with the living Christ … He is a new man, because he no longer lives for himself and of himself, but for Christ and in Him. However in the years that followed he came to realise that this process of renewal and transformation continues all through life”.
The Holy Father continued: “Paul clarifies further this process of ‘re-fusion’ saying that we become new if we change our manner of thinking…our manner of reasoning must become new… … our manner of looking at the world, of understanding reality– our whole way of thinking must change from the roots … we must learn to understand the will of God, allowing it to shape our will, until we desire what God's desires, because we realise that God wants only what is good and beautiful”.
The need to renew our way of being a human person, is expressed by Paul in two passage of the Letter to the Ephesians, upon which the Pope dwelt: “In chapter four of the Letter, the Apostle tells us that with Christ we must reach adult age, mature humanity … Paul wishes Christians to have faith which is ‘responsible’, ‘adult’ ” not be mistaken for “the attitude of those who have stopped listening to the Church and the Bishops, and who autonomously choose what to believe and what not to believe”. Benedict XVI then indicated as examples of adult faith, commitment to promote respect for the “inviolability of human life from the first moment” and “acknowledging matrimony between and man and a woman for life, as the order of the Creator, restored by Christ ”, and he underlined, “ adult faith does not let itself be carried here and there by different currents. It withstands the winds of fashion. It knows that these winds do not blow from the Holy Spirit”.
Paul describes mature, truly adult faith in a positive manner with the expression "living according to truth in charity " (cfr Eph 4, 15). “The power of the faith, the power of God is truth. The truth about the world, about ourselves reveals itself if we contemplate God – the Pontiff explained -. God reveals himself to us in the face of Jesus Christ. Contemplating Christ we realise something else: truth and charity are inseparable… The Apostle tells us that, living according to the truth in charity, we help everything, the whole of the universe, to tend towards Christ… the ultimate purpose of the work of Christ is the universe– the transformation of the universe, of the whole human world, the whole of creation. Those who with Christ serve the truth in charity contribute towards the real progress of the world”.
In the third chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul speaks of the necessity to "strengthen the interior man " (3, 16). The Holy Father said “ interior emptiness – the weakness of the interior man– is one of the major problems of our day. It is necessary to reinforce interiority –perceptiveness of the heart; the capacity to see and to understand the world and man from within, with the heart. We need reason illuminated by the heart so we may learn to act according to the truth in charity. However this is not possible without an intimate relationship with God, without a life of prayer”. Paul tells us “only in communion with all the saints, with the great community of all the believers– not against or without this community– can we come to know the vastness of the mystery of Christ … the crucified Christ embraces the entire universe in all its dimensions. He takes the world in his hands and lifts it up to God”.
Benedict XVI concluded his homily urging those present to pray the Lord “will help us realise the vastness of his love, so that his love and his truth may touch our hearts. Let us ask Christ to live in our hearts and make us new men, who act according to truth in charity ”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 30/6/2009; righe 66, parole 987)