The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Thursday, January 25, 2024

Acts 22, 3-16

Paul addressed the people in these words: “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city. At the feet of Gamaliel I was educated strictly in our ancestral law and was zealous for God, just as all of you are today. I persecuted this Way to death, binding both men and women and delivering them to prison. Even the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify on my behalf. For from them I even received letters to the brothers and set out for Damascus to bring back to Jerusalem in chains for punishment those there as well.  On that journey as I drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from the sky suddenly shone around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ I replied, ‘Who are you, sir?’ And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazorean whom you are persecuting.’ My companions saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who spoke to me. I asked, ‘What shall I do, sir?’ The Lord answered me, ‘Get up and go into Damascus, and there you will be told about everything appointed for you to do.’ Since I could see nothing because of the brightness of that light, I was led by hand by my companions and entered Damascus.  “A certain Ananias, a devout observer of the Law, and highly spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, came to me and stood there and said, ‘Saul, my brother, regain your sight.’ And at that very moment I regained my sight and saw him. Then he said, ‘The God of our ancestors designated you to know his will, to see the Righteous One, and to hear the sound of his voice; for you will be his witness before all to what you have seen and heard. Now, why delay? Get up and have yourself baptized and your sins washed away, calling upon his name.’ ”

St. Luke reports on St. Paul’s return to Jerusalem after one of his missionary journeys to Asia Minor.  Paul knows that his return carries a certain amount of risk because the Jewish leaders think of him as a traitor to their religion.  Responding to those who begged him not to go there, he said, “I am ready not only to be bound, but to die also in Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts of the Apostles 21, 13).  When Paul arrived in Jerusalem, as described by Luke, who accompanied him, he went to meet with St. James the Lesser, the bishop of the Christians in the city, and reported to him all that he had done.  He stayed in Jerusalem for a week and was not bothered by anyone.  But when he went into the Temple, one day, he was spotted by some Jews who had traveled to Jerusalem and who had persecuted him there.  A riot involving a great number of people broke out on the Temple grounds as a result of the accusations of sacrilege and heresy hurled at Paul, whom they began to beat.  Luke recalls that “the whole city was in an uproar” (Acts 21, 30).  The Roman tribune of the city sent his men to arrest Paul and find out why the people had rioted.  When the tribune learned that Paul spoke Greek and was a Roman citizen, he allowed him to speak to the crowd of the Jews, and he did so in Aramaic, the language of the people.  Paul then delivered this account of his own conversion which Luke has preserved for us.  

His conversion from the vicious Saul of Tarsus to the zealous, impassioned St. Paul marks a turning point in the history of the early Church.  Up to the time of his conversion, the Apostles lived and preached and guided the Church in Jerusalem.  With the persecution launched by the Jewish leadership after the martyrdom of St. Stephen, most of the Judean Christians fled, sometimes even going abroad.  While this often resulted in the slow growth of the Faith in Gentile lands, the Church became scattered.  Relatively few Christians remained in Jerusalem.  Paul, after his conversion, preached first to the Jewish communities in places like Damascus, Antioch, and then into Asia Minor, but found greater fruit among the Gentiles.  The outreach to the Gentiles resulted in a great many , conversions, paving the way for the spread of the Church throughout the world.  Paul accomplished this through his great and authentic love of Jesus Christ, through his skilled preaching, and through dogged perseverance in the service of Almighty God.  Besides this breakthrough into Gentile lands, Paul was the first great theologian of the Church.  Studying the teachings of the Lord as remembered by the Apostles, he was able to explain to his converts what it meant that Jesus was both God and man, that they became members of his Body and of each other through baptism, and that members of his Body shared spiritual goods with each other.  He taught about grace and the effect of grace on the human soul.  And he taught the Gentile Christians about how the world would end, though having to repeat himself several times to make this clear to them.

We all stand as benefitted by St. Paul both through his modeling Christian virtue and through his teachings, and we recall how it all began at the time he was the fiercest of the Church’s persecutors.