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“We have the Apostle’s DNA deep inside….”
13th June, 2009 - Posted by Archbishop Mark -
Today I moved from the Beda College to the English College villa at Palazzola in the Alban Hills just outside Rome. I thought a day or two in the hills breathing a different air might help to fine-tune my preparations for the Pilgrimage. I’ve lived up in this part of the world before when I was a chaplain to the Marist Brothers in Nemi just down the road from where I am now. That was years ago when I was doing my doctorate. But I learned to loved this part of the world, the Castelli Romani as they call it in Italian. It’s only a stone’s throw away from Rome, but it’s another planet. I can remember driving back here in summer after meals in Rome, and you could feel the air cooling and drying as you rose into the hills back to the Castelli. In the hills here there are two lakes - the bigger Lake Albano where I am now and the smaller Lake Nemi just down the road where I used to be. Just across the lake from Palazzola lies Castelgandolfo where the Pope has his summer villa.
This afternoon I went for a walk around Lake Albano with Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s “Paul: A Critical Life” under my arm. It’s a path that been trod by many Aussies before me. Just around the Lake a bit there was the summer villa of Propaganda College where many Australia priests and bishops did their seminary training in years past. Walks along these paths were part of the deal when they escaped the Roman heat to come to the cool of the Castelli. I’m not sure St Paul ever made it up this way, though it’s not impossible. He was certainly in Rome long enough, and the Alban Hills were a very popular place way back then. In fact, what is now the papal villa across the lake was once the villa of the Emperor Domitian. So perhaps Paul popped up here for a glass of Frascati (just down the road) and a peep at the imperial villa. I was thinking of that as I went on my walk this afternoon.
I sat on a big rock in a lovely shady space on the path and read about Paul’s early Jewish life as a student of the Torah and a persecutor of the Christians. I was a bit distracted in my reading because I kept thinking of the author of the book, Fr Murphy-O’Connor. Way back in 1990 I did a summer stint at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem where Jerry has worked for many years. He was one of the great experiences of the place, all the more so because he was at times my doubles partner on the tennis court. He was a fierce player and could be especially ferocious with his partner when he felt I was getting in his way. I kept thinking to myself this afternoon that he played tennis just like St Paul would have if Paul had ever played tennis. In fact it’s hard to think of Paul playing any sport, but he must have been tough and wiry, given the distances he travelled for so many years and the hardships he had to endure. I remember former Prime Minister John Howard being asked what it took to succeed in politics. He answered without hesitation, “Physical endurance”. St Paul would have said the same about what it takes to succeed in the apostolic mission. They had to chop off Paul’s head in the end because they tried just about everything else and it didn’t work. He was too tough and just kept bouncing back. If true grit is what makes great sportsmen, Paul would have been one of the greatest.
I had lunch here today in the garden with a delightful group of young Germans who are here on a Latin expedition. They’re studying Latin and thought they would visit the sources in style at the end of their school year. The young guy next to me asked at one point if there were many “believers” in Australia. I said there were quite a few but that many Australians now had no religion and that some were aggressively opposed to religion of any kind. “That’s sad”, he said and he meant it. It could have been an echo of St Paul himself, I thought. St Paul was in many ways the father of European Christianity. In that sense, this young German and I are both sons of the Pauline mission. We have the Apostle’s DNA deep inside. The young German may have echoed a voice much older and more powerful. St Paul would certainly have thought that the death of true faith is inevitably sad, because faith for him is the doorway that leads to the encounter with the Risen Jesus who is our true joy. Let’s hope the Pilgrimage brings a bit of that.
Tags: Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, footsteps of saint paul, pilgrimage, st paul
Posted on: June 13, 2009
Filed under: Archbishop Mark's teachings
7 Comments
Peter
June 13th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Thanks from me too - this is a great initiative.
Could I be Oliver Twist and ask that you make it available as an RSS feed? This would make it easier to follow updates.
CatholicLIFE
June 13th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Hello Peter
The RSS feed will be coming soon to make it easier for everyone to know when there is a new post.
Thanks for the feedback!
Sue Milsom
June 14th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Bishop, thanks for your introductory reflection. I have always wanted to walk in the footsteps of St Paul, but the opportunity has never arisen so I will follow your journey with interest
John
June 16th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Re Antioch: I always thought it was in Syria. Soon my own recent visit to a large part of Paul’s itinerary (western Turkey), I was surprised to see on the map that Antioch itself is in Turkeyn not Syria - and definitely not Lebanon. Just a comment for the record.
Footsteps of Saint Paul » Action in the Footsteps of Saint Paul
June 16th, 2009 at 5:40 am
[...] first two posts, ” I tried to gather the whole Archdiocese into my prayer…” and “We have the Apostle’s DNA deep inside…”, Bishop Mark invites us to journey with him and the other pilgrims as they step out in the [...]
Archbishop Mark
June 16th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Thanks, John, for the correction re Antioch. I’ve never been there and wasn’t too sure in which country it is as I scribbled quickly. I thought it was in northern Lebanon. My second guess would certainly have been Syria. But now you tell us Turkey. Life in the Middle East is never quite what you expect…least of all when it comes to borders.
Henry Byrne
June 19th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Discussion re Antioch
From my limited knowledge of scripture and scriptural geography, I always understood that there were 2 Antiochs_ Pisidean Antioch and Syrian Antioch. Pisidean Antioch is certainly in Turkey; I am sure the bishop of Antioch, Ignatius, would have his city nowhere else but in Syria.
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