In the Catholic Church we are celebrating the Jubilee Year of St. Paul.  Let me tell you, the spirit of St. Paul is in the air.  Our Bishops (although needing to step it up a little more in general) are preaching on the faith and life issues in ways not seen before and I think that can be directly attributed to the Jubilee year of St. Paul.  The Holy Father suggests that we take a close look at Paul's life during this year and so I am taking time to learn more about this great Saint.  One resource I suggest is teaching given by Pope Benedict during his General Audience (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20080827_en.html).

I set out reading about St. Paul with the idea that we could take St. Paul's approach in preaching in the Pagan world and apply it to reconverting a Neo-Pagan world.  The following passage from one of Pope Benedict's Audiences struck me as to this very point: "And the discourse of the Areopagus, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, is the model of how to translate the Gospel into Greek culture, of how to make Greeks understand that this God of the Christians and Jews was not a God foreign to their culture but the unknown God they were awaiting, the true answer to the deepest questions of their culture."   

This idea reminds us that, in evangelization, we need to present God and Christ as the ANSWER to the questions of the culture.  Our culture is different than the Greek culture met by Paul in that - yes, we know of Christ (whereas the Greeks only had their Mythological Gods), however, like the mythical Gods of Greek culture 'c'hristianity has become somewhat of a mythology itself in our relativistic culture.  Whereas the Greek Gods were whatever the ancient writers dreamed up,  our culture sees God in much the same way--He is whatever one wants him to be - a relativistic God.  So what is at the core of relativism?  I think FREEDOM and misguided notions of what freedom involves is what drives our relativistic culture.  The issue of Freedom, however, is at THE CORE of the story of Adam and Eve, and its interesting that the FREEDOM question is the one we face in evangelizing today (whereas I think it was easier to convince the original Pagan's of Christ's message because of the promise of eternal life, I think by and large people are convinced of the promise of eternal life but they believe they will receive it (and a joyful one at that) no matter what, thus, we can't really evangelize using the promise of "eternal life" as the key aspect of preaching today's Gospel).

As my post for today has grown quite long (congratulations if you read this much!), I'll continue waxing on the subject again soon...I will talk further about Freedom, The Fall and how to formulate the Gospel's message of Freedom for the culture today.

ROMANS 1:21-25

Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. 23 And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things. 24 Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.  (Emphasis Added)