Thursday, September 4, 2008

Chinese Jesuit Bishop On The Pauline Year

Shanghai Bishop Wants To Popularize St. Paul

SHANGHAI, China (UCAN) -- Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian of Shanghai has released a Pauline Year pastoral letter in which he hopes local Catholics will model themselves after Saint Paul when they know more about the saint. The bishop said he wanted to write his letter earlier to share his joy over the Pauline Year with Shanghai Catholics and "laud this great apostle," but did not know where to start due to the wealth of information about the saint. Pope Benedict XVI declared June 28, 2008, to June 29, 2009, as the Year of St. Paul.

Bishop Jin, 92, signed the letter on Aug. 30, noting it was the 70th anniversary of his entering the Society of Jesus. Shanghai diocese has been celebrating since March the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Catholicism in this eastern part of China.
Of about 390 churches in the diocese in the mid-1950s, only one had adopted Saint Paul as its patron, Bishop Jin pointed out. Observing that this indicated the apostle has not been popular here, he said he would like to tell people more about the saint. His letter in Chinese, consisting of 14,680 words, is divided into eight expository sections -- Who is Paul?, Appearance of Paul, Characteristics of Paul, the Chosen Instrument, the Legacy of Saint Paul, Paul's Theological Thoughts, Paul's Core Thinking, Paul and Christ -- and a conclusion. The content is based largely on Biblical accounts. In the conclusion, the prelate mentions three personal images he hopes will be imprinted in the minds of priests, nuns and laypeople as ways of modeling themselves on the saint.
One is of Saint Paul in his later years, when he was imprisoned but his thoughts roam freely. This epitomizes the saint's thinking, Bishop Jin noted. The second image, conveying the love of Saint Paul, is of Paul on the road to Damascus being hit by a bolt of light and being converted from a persecutor of Christians to a believer who proclaimed God to all. The third image, of the saint in traveling around the Mediterranean area, centers on his utterance: "Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!" This is epitomizes Saint Paul's guiding motivation, Bishop Jin said.
The prelate said the Church has been greatly affected by the saint even though he thinks Paul "never intended to write" a letter that would be read by the universal Church and Christians centuries after his time. Bishop Jin also noted the relevance of the saint's urgency in evangelization when applied to today's world.
He included an anecdote on preaching about St. Paul in 1951 in Shanghai, which has been regarded historically as a cosmopolitan city. While St. Paul converted due to his internal reflection, Bishop Jin said, external reasons give importance to conversion in today's world. Contemporary Shanghai has "all kinds of graphics and music around on the streets," he observed. "Returning home, violence and amorous content appears immediately on television with the click of the remote control, and one can go online freely to chat or to play games once connected to broadband." In summary, he said "we are easily captured from within and without." On St. Paul's theological thinking, the bishop wrote about a homily he gave in 1951 on the Sacrament of matrimony based on the Letter to the Ephesians (5:22-23): "Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body."

Link (here)

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