Saint Paul VI

On January 25, 2019, Pope Francis ordered the inscription of Saint Paul VI, Pope, into the General Roman Calendar.  St. Paul is celebrated each year as an Optional Memorial on May 29.

The Holy See released the proper liturgical texts in Latin, and on May 29, 2023, the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments confirmed the English translation of those texts. (An approval and confirmation process is still required for a Spanish translation.)

The proper texts in English for the liturgical celebration of St. Paul VI are provided below:

Roman Missal

From the Common of Pastors: For a Pope.

Collect

O God, who entrusted the governance of your Church
to Pope Saint Paul the Sixth,
a steadfast apostle of the Gospel of your Son,
grant, we pray, that enlightened by his teachings,
we may work together with you
to spread the culture of love throughout the world.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Lectionary for Mass

Aside from the usual Mass readings of the day, any Lectionary readings from the Common of Pastors: For a Pope may be used for St. Paul VI. The following readings are also recommended by the Holy See, and will appear in a future edition of the Lectionary for Mass. (Current citations from the Lectionary's Common of Pastors are provided for convenience.)

571A – Saint Paul VI, Pope

From the Common of Pastors: For a Pope, or:

First Reading – 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23 (no. 722-4)
Woe to me if I do not preach it!

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 96:1-2a, 2b-3, 7-8a, 10 (no. 721-5)
R/. Proclaim God's marvelous deeds to all the nations.

Gospel Acclamation – Mark 1:17 (no. 723-3)
Come after me, says the Lord,
and I will make you fishers of men.

Gospel – Matthew 16:13-19 (no. 724-2)
You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.

Liturgy of the Hours

From the Common of Pastors: For a Pope.

Biography

Giovanni Battista Montini was born on September 26, 1897 in the town of Concesio, near Brescia in Italy. Ordained a Priest on May 29, 1920, he exercised his priestly ministry in the service of the Holy See until he was named Archbishop of Milan. Elected to the Chair of Peter on June 21, 1963, he successfully brought the Second Vatican Council to its conclusion, promoting the restoration of ecclesial life, particularly the Liturgy, ecumenical dialogue, and the proclamation of the Gospel to the modern world. On August 6, 1978, he yielded his spirit to God.

Office of Readings

Second Reading
From the Homilies of Saint Paul VI, Pope
(At the last public session of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, December 7, 1965: AAS 58 [1966], 53, 55-56, 58-59)

One must know humanity in order to know God

This Council has made people think about, as they say, a theocentric and theological concept of human nature and of the world. It has presented a challenge to those who consider such ideas foreign and extraneous to the thinking of our day. Furthermore, this teaching claims things that the world would, at first, judge to be foolish, but that subsequently, we hope, it will recognize as human, wise, and salutary: namely, that there is a God. Indeed, God is! God truly exists. He lives, a personal, provident God, possessed of an infinite goodness. And indeed, he is good, not only in himself, but most especially also toward us. He is our creator, our truth, our happiness. Therefore, when one strives, as a human being, to fix one’s mind and heart on God with the self-emptying that leads to contemplation, one engages in an activity of the soul that can be considered the noblest and most perfect of all; it is an activity, we would say, that countless fields of human endeavor in our day could and should pursue to the highest level.

Indeed, the Church, gathered in this Council, is greatly concerned not only with herself and her relationship with God, but also with the human person, and with the human person who, in this present age, appears truly self-absorbed—who, we say, lives; who makes humanity the object of every endeavor; who is uniquely committed to self-advancement; who does not only think that he is worthy to be the fixed point of reference toward which every pursuit is ordered, but even dares to affirm that he is the principle and explanation of all reality. It is the entire human reality, endowed with the innumerable conditions of soul in which the human being appears, that has been displayed before the Council Fathers; they are themselves human beings, all of them indeed Pastors and brothers, with their own gifts of solicitude and love.

Human beings continually lament their lot. In the past and even now they judge others inferior to themselves, and therefore, can be continuously overbearing and secretive, greedy, and aggressive. Unhappy with themselves, they either laugh or weep; they are versatile and capable of playing any part; they are seriously committed to the search for knowledge; they are creatures who think and love, and toil, and still the soul is always oriented toward something more. They are a worthy object of religious reflection on account of the innocence of their infancy, the mystery of their need, and the tender love that their sorrows incite; initially they think only of themselves, and only later care for society at large. They praise times past and at the same time long for what is to come, dreaming that it will be happier than what went before; on the one hand they can be guilty of terrible crimes and on the other show signs of a holy life. And so it goes on.

Secular humanism, which is already widespread and advancing all the time, has presented a challenge and, we might say, provoked the Council. The religion that is the worship of God who desired to become man, and a religion which is the worship of ‘man’ who wishes to become like God, are continually in conflict with each other. What happened then? Did this conflict result in a condemnation? All of that could well have happened, but it certainly did not. The old story of the Good Samaritan was both an example and a standard toward which the spiritual thinking of our Council could be directed. A tremendous inner love for humanity has pervaded the Council from the outset. Those discernible and newly identified human needs which become so much more troublesome as the ‘children of the earth’ grow greater, have occupied the entire attention of our Synod. I appeal to you who care about human affairs in this our own day, and who deny those truths which transcend the order of the natural world, to acknowledge this new attention of ours to humanity; for we also foster the growth of the human person, indeed we more than others.

Since this is how things are, it is true to say that the Catholic religion and human life are united in a friendly alliance, and that each works together with the other for the common human good. The Catholic religion is on the side of the human race, and it is, in a certain way, the life of the human race. Indeed, it should be called ‘the life’ because of the sublime doctrine, perfect from every point of view, which it gives us about humanity (is not humanity, left to its own resources, a mystery to itself?); it hands on this doctrine reliably because it has its knowledge from God. For in order for us deeply to know humanity, true humanity, integral humanity, it is necessary that we first know God himself.

To you here present, I say, let us remember that the face of Christ, the Son of Man, is to be seen in every human face, especially one marked with tears and sorrows; and when we recognize the face of the heavenly Father in the face of Christ,—as he says, “Whoever sees me, sees the Father,”—then our way of appraising human concerns is transformed into Christianity, which is completely centered on God. Therefore, we can only describe things in this way: namely, that in order that God be known it is necessary to know the human person. Let us then strive to attain a love for the human person, not as a means to an end, but rather as a primary end point, by way of which we come to our final end which transcends all human realities.

Responsory
Cf. Philippians 4:8

Whatever is true, honorable, just and pure,
whatever is lovely and commendable,
— ponder these things (E.T. alleluia).

If there is anything of excellence and anything worthy of praise,
— ponder these things (E.T. alleluia).

Prayer

O God, who entrusted the governance of your Church
to Pope Saint Paul the Sixth,
a steadfast apostle of the Gospel of your Son,
grant, we pray, that enlightened by his teachings,
we may work together with you
to spread the culture of love throughout the world.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

The English translation of Liturgical Texts for Saint Paul VI © 2021 International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved.