Pope: St. Paul's World Was Like Our Own

"This is the objective of the Pauline Year,to learn the faith from him, to learn from him who Christ is, to learn, in the end, the path for an upright life."

VATICAN CITY (Zenit) - Benedict XVI says the world and culture in which St. Paul lived and preached is not so different from that of today.

The Pope affirmed this in a reflection on St. Paul at the general audience held today in St. Peter's Square. This is the last audience the Holy Father will host until mid-August.

He left today for the summer papal residence at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. And later this month, he heads to Australia for World Youth Day.

The Pontiff explained that today's catechesis is the first in a series of teachings for the newly inaugurated Pauline Jubilee Year, which runs through June 29, 2009.

"In this, our first meeting," he said, "I would like to pause to consider the environment in which he lived and worked. Such a topic would seem to take us far from our time, given that we must insert ourselves in the world of 2,000 years ago. And yet, this is only apparently and partly true, because it can be verified that in many ways, the socio-cultural environment of today is not so different than that of back then."

Benedict XVI proposed that Paul would have been evaluated by a "double attitude" in regard to his Jewish culture: There were those who admired the Jews for the way their beliefs and lifestyles set them apart from the environment, and those who disdained them for this.

"Paul himself was the object of this double, contrasting evaluation," the Pope said.

And yet, he added, the "particularity of the Jewish culture and religion easily found a place within a reality as all-pervasive as the Roman Empire. More difficult and trying was the position of the group of those Jews and Gentiles who adhered in faith to the person of Jesus of Nazareth, insofar as they were distinguished both from Judaism and the prevailing paganism."

3 cultures

The Pontiff noted two other factors that affected Paul's situation.

First, he mentioned "the Greek, or rather the Hellenistic culture, which after Alexander the Great became the common patrimony at least of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, though integrating within itself many elements of peoples traditionally regarded as barbarians."

And second, "the political-administrative structure of the Roman Empire, which guaranteed peace and stability from Britain to southern Egypt, unifying a territory of a dimension never before seen. In this space, one could move with sufficient liberty and security, enjoying among other things an extraordinary road system, and finding in every point of arrival, basic cultural characteristics that, without detriment to local values, represented in any case a common fabric of unification 'super partes.'"

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Hence, the Holy Father affirmed: "The universalistic vision typical of St. Paul's personality, at least of the Christian Paul after the event on the road to Damascus, certainly owes its basic impetus to faith in Jesus Christ, inasmuch as the figure of the Risen One goes beyond that of any particularistic restriction. [...] Yet, the historical-cultural situation of his time and environment also influenced his choices and commitment.

"Paul has been described as a "man of three cultures," taking into account his Jewish origin, Greek language, and his prerogative of "civis romanus," as attested also by his name of Latin origin."

Stoics

The Bishop of Rome then focused on another element of the Pauline world that affected the apostle: "Stoic philosophy, which prevailed in Paul's time and also influenced, though marginally, Christianity."

"When Paul writes to 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, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things,' he does no more than take up a strictly humanist concept proper to that philosophical wisdom," the Pope said.

He continued: "In Paul's time, there was also a crisis of the traditional religion, at least in its mythological and also civic aspects. After Lucretius, already a century earlier, had controversially stated that 'religion has led to so many misdeeds,' a philosopher such as Seneca, going well beyond any external ritualism, taught that 'God is close to you, he is with you, he is within you.'

"Similarly, when Paul addressed an auditorium of Epicurean philosophers in the Areopagus in Athens, he says literally that 'God does not live in shrines made by man ... but in him we live and move and have our being.'

"With this, he certainly echoes the Jewish faith in one God that cannot be represented in anthropomorphic terms, but he also follows a religious line with which his listeners were familiar."

Furthermore, the Holy Father noted, it was not uncommon for pagan intellectuals of the time to worship not in the official temples of the city, but in private places.

In this way, Christian worship in homes "must have seemed to their contemporaries as a simple variation of this more intimate religious practice," he said.

Finally, the Pope affirmed that "all of us today have much to learn" from St. Paul.

"This is the objective of the Pauline Year," he said, "to learn the faith from him, to learn from him who Christ is, to learn, in the end, the path for an upright life."

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