Update- The Vatican Staff are busy beavers today. They got the Official Translation already up on the Vatican Website in record time.
The Pope gave his final Wednesday Audiences before heading of the Papal Estate , then World Youth Day and later his vacation. It appears the Church Father presentations we have had most Wednesdays will be interrupted for some time (Like a year). The Pope started out his talk "I wish to start a new catechetical cycle today dedicated to the great Apostle St. Paul. As you know, this year is dedicated to him, starting from the liturgical Feast of Saints Peter and Paul last Sunday, to the end of the same feast day next year. "
Though I will miss the Church Fathers for the year the Pope' direction is is important as we enter the Pauline year. Of course it should be noted that we still have a lot to digest on the Holy Father's talks on the Church Fathers. We can review them here and here .Hints to Priest and Deacons that Preach at Mass. Take a gander at what the Pope is saying each Wednesday and perhaps use it or take his example to heart!!!.
The pictures are slow coming out today from the Wednesday audience. I perhaps will add some later as more come online. Thanks to the Ratzinger's Forum for the translation.
Dear brothers and sisters,
I wish to start a new catechetical cycle today dedicated to the great Apostle St. Paul. As you know, this year is dedicated to him, starting from the liturgical Feast of Saints Peter and Paul last Sunday, to the end of the same feast day next year. The Apostle Paul, an exceptional and perhaps inimitable figure, always stimulating, is an example for us of total dedication to the Lord and his Church, as well as of great openness to mankind and its cultures.
It is therefore right that we reserve for him a special place not only in our veneration but even in the effort to understand what he has to say to us Christians today. In this first encounter, let us stop to consider the environment in which he lived and worked. Such a subject would seem to take us far away from our time since we have to imagine the world 2000 years ago. But this is true only apparently and in part, because we will note that under various aspects, the socio-cultural context today did not differ much from what it was in those days.
A primary and fundamental factor to keep in mind is the relationship between the environment into which Paul was born and grew, and the global context into which he subsequently situated himself. He came from a culture that was precisely defined and circumscribed, certainly a minority one, which is that of the people of Israel and their tradition.
In the ancient world, and most notably within the Roman empire, as scholars tell us, the Jews made up only about 10% of the total population. Here in Rome, in the middle of the first century after Christ, they were even much fewer relatively, not being more than 3% of the city population. Their beliefs and their life style, then as now, distinguished them clearly from their surroundings, and this could have two results - either derision which could lead to intolerance, or admiration, which was expressed in various ways, as for instance, among 'those who fear God' and the 'proselytes' - pagans who associated themselves with the synagogue and shared Israel's faith in God.
As concrete examples of this two-sided attitude we can cite, on the one hand, the cutting dismissal of an orator like Cicero who despised the Jewish religion and even the city of Jerusalem (cfr Pro Flacco, 66-69), and on the other hand, that of Nero's wife, Poppea, whom the Jewish historian Flavius Joseph recalls to be a 'sympathizer' of the Jews (cfr Antichità giudaiche 20,195.252; Vita 16), not to mention that Julius Caesar himself had officially recognized particular rights for them as Flavius has recorded (cfr ibid. 14,200-216).
What is certain is that like today, the number of Jews who lived outside the land of Israel - the Jews of the Diaspora - was much more than those who lived within the territory that was called Palestine. It is not surprising then that Paul himself was the object of these two opposing assessments that I referred to. One thing is sure: the distinctive particularity of Jewish culture and religion easily found its place within an institution as omni-pervasive as the Roman empire was. More difficult and trying would be the position of those - Jews or Gentiles - who would adhere faithfully to the person of Jesus of Nazareth, to the degree that Christianity differed both from Judaism and from the prevailing pagan culture. In any case, two factors favored Paul's mission.
The first was Greek culture - perhaps Hellenistic is a better term - which after Alexander the Great, became the common patrimony of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, integrating many elements from the cultures of peoples who were traditionally considered barbarians. A writer of the time says in this respect that Alexander "ordered that everyone should consider the entire 'ecumene' as their homeland... and that there should no longer be any distinction between Greeks and barbarians" (Plutarch, De Alexandri Magni fortuna aut virtute, §§ 6.8).
The second factor was the political-administrative structure of the Roman empire, which guaranteed peace and stability, from Britain to southern Egypt, unifying a vast territory without precedent. Within that space, one could move about with freedom and safety, utilizing among other things an extraordinary highway system, and finding at each place, characteristic and basic cultural elements which, without detriment to local values, formed a common fabric of unification super partes (above divisions], such that the philosopher Fhilo of Alexandria, a contemporary of St. Paul, praised the Emperor Augustus because he "had brought together in harmony all the savage peoples ...making himself the guardian of the peace" (Legatio ad Caium, §§ 146-147).
The universal vision that characterized the personality of St. Paul - at least of the Christian Paul following the event on the road to Damascus - certainly owes its basic impulse from his faith in Jesus Christ, in that the Risen Lord was beyond any specific constraints. In fact, for the apostle, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3,28).
Nonethless, the historico-cultural situation in his time and in his surroundings could not fail to have an influence on Paul's choices and his work. Someone has called Paul 'a man of three cultures' because of his Jewish matrix, his Greek mother tongue, and his prerogatives as a 'civis Romanus' (Roman citizen), as attested even by the Latin origin of his Christian name. One must remember above all, that Stoic philosophy, which was dominant in Paul's time, also influenced Christianity, even if marginally.
In this regard, we cannot fail to mention some Stoic philosophers like the initiators Zeno and Cleantes, and those chronologically closer to Paul like Seneca, Musonius and Epictetus - in whom we find the highest values of humanism and wisdom which would be assimilated into Christianity. As one study on this subject says best, "the Stoa... announced a new ideal which imposed on man duties towards his peers, but at the same time liberated him of all physical and national bonds and made of him a purely spiritual being" (M. Pohlenz, La Stoa, I, Florence 2 1978, pp. 565s).
We can think, for instance, of the doctrine that conceives the universe as one great harmonious body, which leads to the doctrine of equality among all men without social distinctions, to the equality - at least in principle - of men and women, and to the ideal of frugality, moderation and self-discipline to avoid any excess. When Paul writes the Philippians: "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (Phil 4,8), he is merely re-stating an eminently humanistic concept from Stoic philosophy.
In St. Paul's time, traditional religion was undergoing a crisis, at least in its mythological and even its civic aspects. After Lucretius, a century earlier, had judged polemically that "religion has led to so many misdeeds"(De rerum natura, 1,101), a philosopher like Seneca, going far beyond mere external ritualism, taught that "God is near you, he is with you, he is within you" (Letter to Lucilius, 41,1). Analogously, when Paul addressed an audience of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers at the Areopagus of Athens, he says textually that "God does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands...(but) in him we live and move and have our being" (cfr Acts 17, 24-28).
In this, he certainly restates the Jewish faith in a God who cannot be represented in anthropomorphic terms, but he also uses a religious wavelength that his audience knows well. We should also take into account that many pagan cults did not use the official temples of the city but carried out their activity in private places which favored the initiation of new adepts. So it was no surprise that even the Christian assemblies ( called ekklesiai), as the Pauline letters often attest, took place in private homes. Moreover, at that time, there were no public edifices yet [for Christians].
So the early Christian gatherings must have seemed to their contemporaries as just another variant of the common practice of a more intimate form of religion. Of course, the differences between pagan worship and Christian worship were considerable and had to do with the conscious self-identification of the participants in Christian worship, the common participation of men and women, their celebration of 'the Lord's Supper' and the reading of Scriptures.
In conclusion, from this quick overview of the cultural environment in the first century of the Christian era, it is clear that it is not possible to understand St. Paul adequately without placing him in the context, Jewish as well as pagan, of his time. This way, his figure gains historic and intellectual weight, showing what he shared with the prevailing culture and how he was original. And this goes equally well for Christianity in general, of whom Paul is a paradigm of the first order from whom we all have much to learn.
This is the goal of the Pauline Year: to learn from St. Paul, to learn the faith, to learn Christ, and thus to learn the way of right living.
This is how the Holy Father synthesized the lesson in English:
Last Sunday, the Solemnity of the Apostles Peter and Paul, marked the beginning of a Year dedicated to the figure and teaching of the Apostle Paul. Today’s Audience begins a new series of catecheses aimed at understanding more deeply the thought of Saint Paul and its continuing relevance. Paul, as we know, was a Jew, and consequently a member of a distinct cultural minority in the Roman Empire. At the same time, he spoke Greek, the language of the wider Hellenistic culture, and was a Roman citizen. Paul’s proclamation of the Risen Christ, while grounded in Judaism, was marked by a universalist vision and it was facilitated by his familiarity with three cultures. He was thus able to draw from the spiritual richness of contemporary philosophy, and Stoicism in particular, in his preaching of the Gospel.
The crisis of traditional Greco-Roman religion in Paul’s time had also fostered a greater concern for a personal experience of God. As we see from his sermon before the Areopagus in Athens (cf. Acts 17:22ff.), Paul was able to appeal to these currents of thought in his presentation of the Good News. Against this broad cultural background, Paul developed his teaching, which we will explore in the catecheses of this Pauline Year.
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