St. Paul's Gospel | Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J. | Homiletic & Pastoral Review | November 2009
On June 29 we concluded the year in honor of St. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles and author of half of the books in the New Testament. Earlier this year, having noticed that Pope Benedict XVI was preaching regularly on St. Paul, I decided to do that same thing. So for seventeen weeks I preached on the letters of St. Paul.
I spent many hours preparing each sermon, in imitation of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who said that he spent one hour of preparation for every minute of preaching. That study was most rewarding and gave me a few valuable insights into the thinking and theology of St. Paul.
It is clear that St. Paul is the most important theologian in the history of the Church, since he first gave expression to many truths that are the basis of the Creed and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The key to the theology of St. Paul is his personal encounter with the glorified Christ on his way to Damascus. That revelation, in which he was blinded for three days, changed Paul into a new man. The persecutor of Christ was changed into a zealous apostle to proclaim that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Christ, that he is Lord (Kyrios), and the Son of God. Because he saw the glorified Christ and listened to him he was transformed from a Jewish rabbi to a Christian rabbi. Paul saw Christ, he heard him, he was called by him and he was sent by him to convert the world. In carrying out his calling he was destined to suffer much for the sake of Christ—rejection, hatred, scourging, shipwreck, imprisonment and finally beheading by the Romans.
Christ is the key to St. Paul. His theology is Christocentric. The Gospel according to St. Paul is that the Son of God became man in Jesus Christ in order to reconcile all mankind to God the Father by his life, passion, death and resurrection. For Paul, Christ is the glorified Christ, now reigning gloriously in heaven and seated at the right hand of the Father.
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