On June 28, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI inaugurated the special jubilee year to mark the approximately 2,000th anniversary of St. Paul’s birth. The special jubilee year, June 28, 2008 to June 29, 2009, is a moment in the church’s life that holds great promise and challenge for all Christians.

As one engaged in ministerial formation, I am drawn to the pastoral manner in which St. Paul called others to ministry in Christ. Throughout his ministry St. Paul was depicted calling others to share his ministry in most significant ways. He was not one who recruited helpers to perform menial tasks while he proclaimed God’s word. Rather, he taught, trained, formed, mentored, and accompanied his colleagues to the point that they could set out on their own missionary journeys.

St. Paul prepared followers to take his place in leading local Christian communities so that he could bring faith in Christ Jesus to other towns and villages. Timothy offers a glimpse into St. Paul’s ministerial approach to servant leadership: “Command and teach these things. Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Till I come, attend to the public reading of scripture, to preaching, to teaching” (1 Tim. 4: 11-13).

During this special jubilee year of St. Paul, it may be time for us to look more seriously at the Timothys in our own ministries. How effectively do we hand on to others the gift (charism) of our ministry by accompaniment, mentoring, formation, and teaching?

I was drawn to this approach to the year of St. Paul by a recent e-mail I received from a woman who is carrying forward Don Bosco’s mission to needy youth through a ministry to addicted prisoners. I first met her when she was working with the Salesians as a lay volunteer at a youth crisis center in Birmingham, Alabama. Her reflections on a recent weekend program struck me on a number of fronts: “I felt like I had gone back in time to my school days in Guyana with the nuns (Ursulines) and then the business of Birmingham. With all the joy and laughter amid the ‘work’ and sharing.”

It is hard to overstate the lasting effect that the ministerial experiences with the Ursulines in Guyana and the Salesians in Birmingham had on this woman. In many ways, they were formative in her life as a disciple of the Lord Jesus in serving those in dire need. The missions of both Sts. Angela and John Bosco are being furthered by this woman because of the formative quality of sharing in our communities, ministry, and charism.

For me it is startling to realize that this volunteer experience had such a profound and lasting effect on a volunteer—without our having given much attention to the formative process itself! Imagine the outcome if we started off intending to form these volunteers for a lifetime of ministry in our charism so that they could take it to places we could not go!

Perhaps this special jubilee year of St. Paul will offer us an opportunity to reflect on our call to be more effective in sharing the charism of our founders with many Timothys, so that God’s reign will be proclaimed to all those in need throughout the world.

Thomas A. Dunne, S.D.B., directs the Salesian Office for Ministerial Formation

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