500. January 25, Conversion of St Paul

Meditations no. 430 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The grace of God converts Paul from a persecutor into an Apostle.

The octave of Christian Unity concludes with the commemoration of the conversion of St Paul. Saul, we read in the First Reading of the Mass, breathing threats and death against the disciples of the Lord, presented himself before the High Priest and asked for letters of recommendation for the synagogues of Damascus. Paul was a zealous defender of the law of Moses, and in his eyes the doctrine of Christ was a danger for Judaism. Therefore, he did not question the need to place all his energies at the service of the extermination of the Church. He had consented to the death of Stephen and, still not satisfied, he wreaked havoc on the Church. He went from house to house, making prisoners of men and women, and imprisoning them.

Now he sets out for Damascus, where the first seeds of the faith have taken root, with full powers to bring under arrest to Jerusalem all those he could find, both men and women, who were followers of the Way. But our Lord has other plans for him. While he was on his way, it happened that, as he was nearing Damascus, suddenly a great light from heaven surrounded him. And falling to the ground he heard a voice which said to him: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And he answered: Who are you Lord? And the voice said: I am Jesus, whom you persecute.

St Paul will never forget this personal encounter with the risen Christ. Many years afterwards, when he had already been converted into an untiring defender and propagator of the faith, he remembered this episode frequently: and last of all, he wrote to the Corinthians, as if to a child who is born before its time, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of all the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am and his grace towards me was not in vain.

All the eagerness with which he had persecuted the Christians earlier, now urges him on -with a new force, greater than anything he had ever dreamed of - to propagate the faith in Christ to the furthest corners of the world. He gives himself unreservedly to his mission, he undergoes innumerable risks and dangers, he overcomes fatigue, tiredness and fear in order to gain souls. There is now nothing which is capable of separating him from the fulfilment of his task: his life was indelibly marked by that meeting on the way to Damascus, which was the beginning of his vocation.

God our Lord gives his grace to whoever he wants, without conditions, our Father commented.

What preparation did St Paul have when Christ knocks him off his horse, leaves him blind and calls him to the apostolate? None whatsoever! Nevertheless, when he responds and says: Lord, what do you want me to do? (Acts 9: 6), Jesus Christ chooses him to be an Apostle. Afterwards, in his humility, Paul will say that he is tamquam abortivus (1 Cor 15: 8), like a child born before its time, of God, as if he had not been born well. He judges himself to be that bad. Many men of his time were better than him, when our Lord called him. And nevertheless, Paul becomes the Apostle and not them.

The Lord wants to make use of instruments, as he made use of St Paul.

The desired union of Christians is a gift that we have to ask for insistently from our Lord. Grace, if it is grace, St Augustine reminds us, is given gratuitously. What we are asking for in these days depends on the divine good will. We know that God wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, but foe wants to use instruments. To attract men and women to the Church, God normally uses the collaboration of good Christians who, by means of their word and their example, help others to know the fullness of the truth. Because, how will they invoke He whom they do not believe in? Or how will they believe if they have not heard someone speak of Him? And how will they hear if someone does not preach to them? And how will they preach if they are not sent?… Therefore faith comes from preaching and preaching through the word of Christ.

It is necessary, repeated our Father, that my children look for the occasion to speak, to communicate these marvels that our Lord has confided to us. Presence is not enough if we are going to work like Christians. It’s not true! Those who are ashamed of Christ are the ones who say this. Jesus made himself present, but he also spoke and gave doctrine. Presence is not enough. Those who say that this is enough are wrong. We have to speak, with the gift of tongues, with attractiveness.

We have tongues to speak with, and even sometimes imprudently. We have to go throughout the world joyful and imprudent. The more imprudent you are the better! And I always, and now as well, think of the times of St Paul, and I remember that admonition: argue, obsecra, increpa… ; opportune, importune (2 Tim 4: 2). I was telling you that I think about those times of St Paul, with that Roman Empire, full of ostentation, where the emperor, with a silly pride, dipped his head so that his personal grandeur would not scrape the triumphal arches.

Those pagans used to live like animals, thinking about their stomach, about their sensuality and about their human power. And Paul, faced with this conception of life, launches out to preach Christ, this Jesus who has demanded that we be humble, who has lived a clean life… It is just the opposite of the general tenor of the times, but St Paul who knows, who has tasted to the full the joy of belonging to God, launches out, sure, with his task of preaching, and does it always, even from prison.

We have to foster our desire for souls.

Learn to pray, learn to seek, learn to ask, learn to call: until you find, until you receive, until they open to you. We have to have recourse to persevering prayer and generous mortification, so that our Lord grants to his Church the grace of the union of all Christians. It is St Paul who teaches us this: as soon as they helped him to get up from the ground, he left for Damascus, and remained therefore three days without being able to see and without eating or drinking. Only after this time of prayer and penance does God command his servant Ananias: Go, because this is the instrument I have chosen to bear my name to the gentiles, the kings and the children of Israel. I will show him all he will have to suffer for my name’s sake.

Our Father used to remind us: Realise that God, when he sets his gaze on us, and giving us the grace to struggle to reach sanctity in the middle of the world, also gives us the obligation to do apostolate. You should understand that, even humanly, as one of the Fathers of the Church commented, the concern for souls arises as a logical consequence of this election by God: when you discover something good you try to attract others to it. You have to want others to accompany you along the ways of the Lord. If you are going to the forum or the baths, and you come across someone who has nothing to do, you invite him to go with you. Apply this earthly custom to the spiritual sphere, and when you go to God, don’t go alone (St Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia, 6, 6).

St Paul had to suffer a great deal in his apostolic work, but those sorrows were blessed a thousandfold: those who did not like him, our Father commented, used to say that he was short, slow of speech, cross-eyed… And he felt so great!… With those invisible wounds he felt like alter Christus, ipse Christus.

We finish our prayer, conscious of the fact that, as our Father used to say: You and I are worth very little. And, nevertheless, we have the duty to have a superiority complex.

Think about why. We can say: Lord, really, I am nothing, I am worth nothing and I have nothing. We are not worth anything, we cannot do anything and we have nothing; but we have the arms of Holy Mary, Mother of Fair Love, we have the arms of our Father God, and therefore we can say with St Paul: omnia possum in eo qui me confortat! (Phil 4: 13).