Leo XIV paused in silent prayer before the Trophaeum of the Apostle to the Gentiles: it is the most emblematic gesture of his visit to the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. The Holy Father entered the basilica through the Holy Door in a procession with Benedictine monks and was welcomed by the Father Abbot, Donato Ogliari, and the Cardinal Archpriest, James Michael Harvey. Before kneeling down in prayer at the tomb, the Pope delivered a brief, intense homily in which he entrusted the beginning of his Petrine ministry to St Paul. Three major themes central to St Paul’s teachings resonated throughout the homily: grace, faith and justice.
“At the root of every vocation, God is present”, the Pope said with regard to the theme of grace: “in his mercy and his goodness, as generous as that of a mother who nourishes her child with her own body for as long as the child is unable to feed itself.”
Moments before, he entrusted the beginning of his pontificate to the Apostle of the Gentiles, who starts by saying that he received the grace of his vocation from God: “In other words, he acknowledges that his encounter with Christ and his own ministry were the fruit of God’s prior love, which called him to a new life while he was still far from the Gospel and persecuting the Church.” This was immediately followed by a quotation from Saint Augustine, who was also a convert: “How can we choose, unless we have first been chosen? In fact,
“We cannot love, unless someone has loved us first.”
“Salvation does not come about by magic, but by a mysterious interplay of grace and faith, of God’s prevenient love and of our trusting and free acceptance.” The image evoked by the Pontiff is the description of Saul’s conversion: “When the Lord appeared to him on the road to Damascus, he did not take away his freedom, but gave him the opportunity to make a decision, to choose an obedience that would prove costly and entail interior and exterior struggles, which Paul proved willing to face.”
“As we thank the Lord for the calling that changed Saul’s life, let us ask him to enable us to respond in the same way to his grace,
and to become, ourselves, witnesses of the love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”, the augury for his pontificate. “Let us ask the Lord for the grace to cultivate and spread his charity, and to become true neighbours to one another”, the request in the wake of the address delivered by Pope Francis in this very place on 25 January 2024: “Let us compete in showing the love that, following his encounter with Christ, drove the former persecutor to become ‘all things to all people, even to the point of martyrdom. In this way, for us as for Paul, the weakness of the flesh will show the power of faith in God that brings justification.”
“Dear friends, God loves us. This is the great truth of our life; it is what makes everything else meaningful.”
The Pope concluded his homily echoing the message of Benedict XVI, as delivered in the homily during the Prayer Vigil with Young People on 20 August 2011 on the occasion of the World Youth Day in Madrid. “Our life originates as part of a loving plan of God,” and faith leads us to “open our hearts to this mystery of love and to live as men and women conscious of being loved by God”, continues Leo XIV’s quotation from Pope Ratzinger.
“Here we see, in all its simplicity and uniqueness, the basis of every mission, including my own mission as the Successor of Peter and the heir to Paul’s apostolic zeal”, commented Leo XIV: “May the Lord grant me the grace to respond faithfully to his call.”
Moments earlier, His Holiness recalled the Benedictine community, entrusted for centuries with the care of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls: “How can we fail to mention, then, as we speak of love as the source and driving force of the preaching of the Gospel, the insistent appeals of Saint Benedict, in his Rule, to fraternal charity in the monastery and hospitality towards all?”. He went on by recalling the words that, “more than a thousand years later, another Benedict, Pope Benedict XVI, addressed to the people.”
