This Saturday, January 25 is the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul and the Jubilee of the World of Communications, a special Jubilee Day within the ongoing 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope that celebrates the importance of communication within the Church.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that these feasts fall on the same day. After all, Saint Paul was a communicator par excellence. We are still reading and learning from his letters to the first Christian communities nearly two thousand years after he wrote them.
Why has Paul’s communication style endured for so long and given life to so many? What might we learn from him?
Many things, undoubtedly—and at the same time, just one thing. Paul did not communicate with mere words but with his life: a life united to Jesus Christ. This divine life radiates from Paul’s letters. When Paul encourages the first Christians, he does so with the heart of Jesus. When Paul reprimands them, he echoes the agony of God who longs to see his wayward children return to him. When Paul writes, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ,” he points to the fact that everything we observe about him—his words, his actions, and his attitudes—speak of Jesus and are meant to lead us to him.
Paul lived in Christ. He still lives in Christ, and his words exist to guide us toward the union with God that he enjoys. But what about our words? On this double feast day, perhaps we might compare our motives for writing, posting, emailing, and texting with that of Paul. Are our words helping others to heaven? Do they reflect the life of Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, in us? Or do they have another purpose?
May Saint Paul the Apostle help us become true communicators of Christ in thought, word, and deed.
