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Pauline Feast OK's for Sunday in '09 |
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VATICAN CITY, JUNE 1, 2008: The Vatican will allow the Mass for the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul to be said on a Sunday in 2009, during the Pauline jubilee year. The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments published Friday the decree authorizing the Mass to be said Jan. 25, 2009, which falls on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time. Some feasts that coincide with a Sunday are moved to a weekday since the normal Sunday liturgy usually takes precedent.
The decree, signed by Cardinal Francis Arinze and Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith, respectively prefect and secretary of the congregation, explains that the authorization is a special permission given during the Pauline Year.
Benedict XVI declared the jubilee year marking the 2,000th anniversary of Paul's birth. It will be held from June 28, 2008, to June 29, 2009.
The decree states: "The Apostle St. Paul, who proclaimed the truth of Christ to the whole world and did so after being Christ’s persecutor, spent himself in using every means to proclaim the Good News to the nations, committing himself with zeal to the unity and concord of all Christians, has always been and continues to be venerated by the faithful, especially in this particular year, the bimillennium of his birth, which the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI desired to institute as a special jubilee year.
"Thus, in virtue the faculties conferred on this Congregation by the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI, it is permitted, in an extraordinary manner, that on Jan. 25, 2009, the Third Sunday 'per annum,' a Mass according to the formulary 'Conversion of St. Paul,' as is found in the Roman Missal, may be celebrated in the individual churches. In such a case, the second reading of the Mass is taken from the Roman Lectionary for the Third Sunday 'per annum,' and the Creed will be recited."
June 28 will be the solemn opening of the Pauline Jubilee Year. The Pope will preside with first vespers in St. Paul's Outside the Walls.
Then, on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, June 29, he will preside over a 9:30 a.m. Mass, which will include the imposition of the pallium on new metropolitan archbishops. (Click here for original post) |
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St. Paul, the Communicator |
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 As a visible synthesis of the celebration of the Pauline Year, willed by Benedict XVI for the Bimillenium of the birth of St. Paul, an image has been selected for Paulines whhich represents St. Paul while he is writing a letter.
To some, it can be that the image may be considered unusual, considering the abundant iconography of St. Paul in the East, in the West and also within the confines of the Pauline Family. As per every representation, this image likewise of St. Paul writing a letter, is an elaborate interpretation based on reasons that are desired.
St. Paul writing a letter trace back, above all, to the role he had in the meditation on the Letter to the Romans which convinced Blessed James Alberione to choose St. Paul as model for the Pauline Family: "He cam across to him indeed as the Apostle, and thus every apostle and every apostolate could draw from Him" (Abundantes divitiae gratiae suae, n. 64).
St. Paul writing a letter, recalls the essential definition which the Founder gives to the Pauline charism at the beginning of his foundational activity: "The written preaching, alongside the oral preaching" (Apostolato stampa, p. 5).
St. Paul writing a letter, having beside him scrolls of paper, suggests the love of the Apostle for the Sacred Scripture. Often, the Founder, drawing from the Fathers of the Church, describes the Bible as "the Letter which God writes to persons" and Paulines are the "postmen" in charge of delivering it to all, with every form of communication.
St. Paul writing a letter, recalls the nature of his written preaching characterized by knowing how to find in the person of Christ, who died and resurrected, the adequate solution to the problems rising in the Christian communities he founded.
St. Paul writing a letter and who fixes his eyes at those who gazes at him, wants to recall that which he writes to the Christians in Corinth. "You are a letter of Christ, mediated by our service, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tables of stone, but on the tables that are Christian flesh" (2 Cor 3:3).
St. Paul writing a letter continues the chose iconography of Blessed James Alberione which, in the stained glass window of the temple constructed at St. Paul Albam has been made to represent St. Paul while writing the Letter to the Romans.
Rome, February 6, 2008
Fr. Silvio Sassi
Superior General
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