Benedict XVI brings the Pauline year to a close, reporting the results of a
probe into the sarcophagus inside the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.
Through the newness of the Christian faith one grows up without adhering to the
world’s fashions and mindsets, defending life and marriage between a man and a
woman. Faith generates progress in truth and love. The mystery of Christ has
value for the cosmos, for every people and the entire universe.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – With “great emotion” Benedict XVI announced that a
recent scientific probe confirmed what Catholic tradition has always held,
namely that the body of the Apostle Paul is located under the papal altar in the
Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. The announcement was made today in the
basilica itself during the homily of the First Vespers of the Feast Day of
Saints Peter and Paul, which brings the Pauline Year to a close, a year that was
held to celebrate 2,000 years since the birth of the Apostle of Tarsus.
The Pontiff said that recently the tomb was “subject to a scientific
investigation. A small hole was drilled in the sarcophagus, unopened for
centuries, and a probe was introduced. It found traces of a valuable purple
fabric, in linen and gold layer-laminated, and a blue fabric with linen threads.
Red incense grains and substances containing proteins and limestone were also
discovered. Small fragments of bone were found and radiocarbon dated by experts
who did not know their place of origin. Results indicate that they belong to
someone who lived between the 1st and 2nd century A.D. This seems to confirm the
unanimous and undisputed tradition according to which these are the mortal
remains of the Apostle Paul. All this fills our soul with deep emotion.”
In a crowded basilica and in the presence of representatives of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate of Constantinople, the sister Orthodox Church, the Pope outlined
some of the elements in Apostle Paul’s message which must become part of the
everyday existence of Christians.
“The Pauline Year has come to an end, but being on the same path as Paul and,
with him and thanks to him, know Jesus and, like him, be enlightened and
transformed by the Gospel, will always be part of Christian existence,” the
Pontiff said.
Newness was the first element he stressed. Citing Saint Paul’s Letter to the
Romans (Ch. 12), he said that “with Christ a new way to worship God, a new form
of worship, began. It lies in the fact that the living man becomes himself
adoration, “sacrifice” even in his body. No longer are things offered to God but
our own existence becomes a way to praise God.”
“We must become new men,” the Holy Father said, “transformed in a new way of
existence. The world is always looking for new things because it is rightly
unhappy of reality as it is. Paul told us that without new men the world cannot
be renewed. Only if there are new men will there be a new world, a renewed and
better world.”
For the Pontiff what is new is in Paul himself who “became new, someone else,
because he no longer lived for himself and in himself but for Christ and in Him.
Over the years he saw that this process of renewal and transformation went on
during one’s whole life. As we become new we allow ourselves to be seized and
moulded by the New Man Jesus Christ.”
“The way of thinking of old men, the standard way of thinking is usually
directed at possessing, well-being, influence, success, fame and so on. But in
being so it has a limited reach. In the end one’s own self remains the centre of
the world . . . . We must learn [instead] to share Jesus Christ’s thinking and
will. Once that is done we shall be new men in which a new world emerges.”
This newness also means having a grown-up rather than a childish faith; it is an
invitation not to conform or adhere to the standard mindset.
“In the last few decades the expression ‘grown-up faith’ has spread,” Benedict
XVI said. “It is often used in relation to the attitudes of those who no longer
pay attention to what the Church and its Pastors say—which is to say, those who
choose on their own what to believe or not believe in a sort of ‘do-it-yourself’
faith. Expressing oneself against the Magisterium of the Church is presented as
a sort of ‘courage’, whereas in fact not much courage is needed because one can
be certain that it will get public applause. Instead courage is needed to adhere
to the Church’s faith, even if it contradicts the mould of today’s world. Paul
calls this non-conformism a ‘grown-up faith’. For him following the prevailing
winds and currents of the time is childish. For this reason dedicating oneself
to the inviolability of life from its beginning, radically opposing the
principle of violence, in the defence precisely of the most defenceless;
recognising the lifetime marriage between a man and a woman in accordance with
the Creator’s order, re-established again by Christ is also part of a grown-up
faith. A grown-up faith does not follow any current here and there. It is
against the winds of fashion.”
A grown-up faith is the one that grows by living the truth in love (cf
Ephesians, 4:15). Both are necessary because God is both. “The Apostle told us
that by living the truth in love, we can make the whole—the universe—grow by
aiming for Christ. . . . The ultimate purpose of Christ’s work is the
universe—the transformation of the universe, of mankind’s entire world, of the
whole of creation. Those who with Christ live the truth in love contribute to
the world’s progress. Yes! Here it is clear that Paul is aware of the idea of
progress. Through his life, suffering and resurrection, Christ was the real
great leap of progress for humanity and the world. Now the universe must grow in
view of Him. Where the presence of Christ grows, there is real progress in the
world.”
In order for this renewal to occur it is necessary to strengthen the inner self
(Ephesians, 3:16). “Men are often empty inside and thus must grasp for promises
and drugs, which end up adding to their inner sense of emptiness,” the Pope
explained. “This inner emptiness, man’s inner weakness, is one of today’s great
problems. The inner self—the heart’s perceptiveness, the capacity to see and
understand the world and man from within, with the heart—must be strengthened.
We need reason enlightened by the heart to learn to act in accordance to the
truth in love. This cannot be done without an intimate relationship with God,
without a life of prayer. We need to meet God, something which is given to us in
the Sacraments. And we cannot speak to God in prayer if we do not let Him speak
first, if we do not listen to him in the word he gave us.”
In his final thoughts the Pope turned to the cosmic dimensions of the mystery of
Christ, about its “breadth and length and height and depth” (Ephesians, 3:18).
“The mystery of Christ has a cosmic vastness. He does not belong only to a given
group. The crucified Christ embraces the whole universe in all its dimensions.
He takes the world in his hands and raises it towards God . . . . In the Cross
Christ’s love has embraced the lowest depth—the darkness of death—and the
supreme height—God’s own nobility. He has taken in his arms the breadth and the
vastness of humanity and the world in all their distances. He always embraces
the universe—for all of us.”
