My father's name was Paul and his birthday fell on this day, the 29th of June. This little carved wooden statue of his patron saint is the only possession I have that was his. If he had lived he would have been 76 today. Instead, he died of throat cancer at the age of 55. I was still 17 and had just graduated from high school. Although we were never very close during his life, I was at his side during his hour of death, lying beside him in the night, holding his hand.
I have many memories of my father in specific places and situations but the only words I remember him saying directly to me were at the airport the summer my parents divorced. I was sent to live with my sister for a month while he moved out and before my flight departed he gave me another piece of baggage I have spent the rest of my life unpacking:
"When you get back, your father won't be here but his love for you will be."
At the time I must have taken it all in stride. Melancholic that I am I have slowly digested these words throughout my life, gradually realizing the impact his choices made on me, my mother and my siblings. His choice of words left me at a distance too - did he really love me all that much? Why did he refer to himself in third person? How is he supposed to love me when he's not there?
If fathers give us our first and lasting image of God, I admit that I have struggled with the frustration with trying to feel close to my heavenly Father without having experienced the benefit of a loving, loyal and affectionate earthly one.
Maybe this is why I have not given much thought or prayer to "The Year of St. Paul". I have kept St. Paul at a distance, even resisting the thought of naming our son "Paul". Today I am taking a step towards knowing Paul better by using this very last day to meditate over this article I found over at American Catholic.org. The passage in red is what speaks to me the most.
Pope Benedict announced the church's Pauline year
marking the 2,000th anniversary of the saint's birth last June 28, the
eve of the feast of SS. Peter and Paul. The pontiff said the year,
marked by liturgies and events in Rome, should also be celebrated in
dioceses around the world.
In his
pastoral letter, Bishop Saltarelli noted St. Paul's role as an
accomplice in the martyrdom of St. Stephen and Paul's subsequent
conversion experience on the road to Damascus. "St.
Paul understood how sin works in human nature and how the Holy Spirit
can completely transform habits of corruption," the bishop wrote. "St.
Paul also understood how to influence non-Christian and anti-Christian
mind-sets with charity so as to be able to be an instrument of another
mind's enlightenment.
"The best
way that we can celebrate the Year of St. Paul is to go to the risen
Lord and ask him about what deep and intimate conversion of life he is
calling us to," he said. The Year of St. Paul offers a chance for Catholics to focus more attention on the Bible, the bishop said. "Any
investment in understanding and praying the Scriptures more deeply is
at the same time an investment in a fuller, more active and conscious
participation in our Catholic Mass and sacramental liturgies," he said.
Quoting St. Jerome, Bishop
Saltarelli noted, "The Word of God, drawn from the knowledge of the
Scriptures, is real food and real drink" and suggested the Year of St.
Paul is a good time "to rediscover the Roman Catholic Church's
contemporary biblical scholarship." Recent
novels and films, the bishop wrote, are a wake-up call to the church to
promote "biblical literacy" and daily Bible reading.
"The
cross of Jesus Christ is at the center of all that Paul does," Bishop
Saltarelli writes. "He teaches us how to deal with the hardships and
grief of life. Paul experienced it all: rejection, calumny,
indifference, shipwrecks, imprisonment and ultimately martyrdom,
symbolized in art by Paul holding a sword." Paul's
ability to put the cross of Christ above temptations to egoism and
pride is the "true source of his effectiveness," the bishop wrote.
Paradoxically, Paul's "interior struggles offer us encouragement and
strength to continue fighting in regard to our own character and
temperament struggles," he added.
Love
of the Eucharist and the church are key elements in celebrating St.
Paul, who often used the image of the body of Christ to show "how the
church is a communion of individuals with specific charisms and talents
which build up of the body," the bishop said in his pastoral. "Our
reverent reception of the Eucharist is the great spark of missionary
activity that leads us like St. Paul to the ends of the earth," he
said.
St. Paul's proclamation in
his First Letter to the Corinthians, "Woe to me if I do not preach the
Gospel," reflects what Bishop Saltarelli said he believes is one of
Pope Benedict's goals for the Year of St. Paul: "to have every Roman
Catholic hold up a mirror to their life and to ask: Am I as determined
and as energetic about spreading the Catholic faith as St. Paul was?"
