Conversion of St. Paul (2027 Edition)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

The feast of the conversion of St. Paul marks the end of the octave of Christian unity. The grace of God changed St. Paul from being a persecutor of Christians to being a messenger of the Gospel. This reality can teach us that our faith has its base in grace, and in the free correspondence of each person. We can also be reminded that the best way to bring about the unity of Christians is to encourage personal conversions among those around us.

As a zealous defender of the Mosaic law, Saul looked upon the Christians as a mortal threat to Judaism. He dedicated his every waking hour to the extermination of the early Church. Saul first appears in the Acts of the Apostles as one of the witnesses to the execution of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. St. Augustine has observed that the final prayer of the martyr bore fruit in the life of one of his persecutors.

Some time after that event, Saul set out with letters to the synagogues at Damascus, “so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:2). Thanks to the workings of the Holy Spirit and the lively apostolate of the early Christians, the Church had expanded quite rapidly, despite the most adverse of conditions. We’re told in the Acts of the Apostles that “those who were scattered went abroad preaching the word” (Acts 8:4).

Saul was traveling along the road to Damascus, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). But God had other plans for this man of action. It was around midday as he approached the city, when suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:4–5).

At that very moment, Saul poses the most important question of his life to Jesus: “What shall I do, Lord?” (Acts 22:10). Saul was now another man. He had become Paul. In the act of conversion, he understood everything at once. His new faith led him to an attitude of complete self-giving in the hands of God.

“What do you want me to do, my Lord? What do you expect of me?” There may have been many occasions when Our Lord has wanted to attract our attention, to get into our lives. St. Josemaría says in The Forge, he wants to reveal his wonderful plans for us.

“Blessed be God,” you said after having finished your sacramental confession. And you thought, it is as if I had just been born again. You then continued calmly, Domine, quid vis me facere? Lord, what would you have me do? And you yourself came up with the reply: “By the help of your grace, I will let nothing and no one come between me and the fulfillment of your most holy will. I will serve you unconditionally.”

St. Paul says, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and sacrificed himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). The life of St. Paul is a beacon of hope, a whole pathway of correspondence to God’s grace. Hopefully we’ll never forget those times when Our Lord stepped into our lives, perhaps without special warning. St. Paul never forgot his memorable encounter with the risen Lord. He uses the phrase “on the road to Damascus” to mark when his life began anew. On other occasions, he states that this was the turning point of his entire life. “Last of all,” he said to the Corinthians, “as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Cor. 15:8).

His life is a beacon of hope because who can say that they cannot overcome their faults, when one of the most zealous persecutors of the believers could be transformed into the apostle of the Gentiles? God’s grace can still work miracles in human hearts in our day. But the power of God depends upon our correspondence to grace. God’s grace is sufficient. What is necessary, or what is lacking, is our free, wholehearted assent to grace.

St. Augustine says, with regard to Paul’s words, “Not because of me, but because of the grace of God in me,” this is to say, said St. Augustine, “Not because of me alone, but because of God working with me.” And for this reason, not because of the grace of God alone, nor myself alone, but the grace of God and him. If we live our lives counting upon the help of God’s grace, we will ourselves be able to overcome any defect or disappointment.

Our Lord is constantly calling us to begin again, to convert our hearts, to walk in peace and joy along the divine pathways of the earth. Like St. Paul, we have to respond to Our Lord’s invitation. “What shall I do, Lord? In what areas do you want me to struggle harder? In what ways do you want me to change my behavior?”

St. Teresa says since Jesus is always seeking us out, it’s paramount that we draw forth the energy to be useful, as well as being very grateful for that gift. These are the conditions which Our Lord sets down. If we don’t manage his treasures well, he will give them to another and we may end up paupers. St. Teresa says the Lord will give his jewels to someone who will make them shine more radiantly.

“What shall I do, Lord?” We can ask this question from the depths of our hearts many times during the course of each day. Our Lord will show us where our love has fallen short or has not deepened as God has wanted it to. St. Paul also says, “I know whom I have believed” (2 Tim. 1:12). These words in some ways explain the rest of Paul’s adult life. He met the Christ. Everything else faded into shadow compared to this luminous reality. Nothing had any value unless it was in Christ and for Christ. The one thing he now feared was to offend God from now on. That was all that mattered.

The only thing he lived for, says St. John Chrysostom, was to be faithful to Our Lord and to make him known to all people. This is an attitude which we could try to aspire to. From the time of his encounter with Our Lord, Paul gave over his entire being to God with all his heart. He took the same enthusiasm and drive which he used to persecute the Christians and put it to the service of the Church.

He received the apostolic mission which Christ gave to his disciples and made it known. In the Gospel of St. Mark, we’re told: “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). St. John Paul II said Paul accepted this task and made of it, from that moment, the very purpose of his life. His conversion lies precisely in this: that he allowed the Christ he encountered on the road to Damascus to enter into his life and to orient it towards one single goal—the preaching of the Gospel.

“I owe a debt to the Greeks as well as to the Barbarians, to the learned as well as to the ignorant,” he said. “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God unto salvation for whoever believes” (Rom. 1:14, 16). For the sake of Christ, Paul would take on himself risks and dangers without number. He would endure long hours of work, exhaustion, apparent failures, betrayals, whatever was necessary to win souls for God.

He says to the Corinthians: “Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked. A night and a day I have been adrift at sea. On frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren. In toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And apart from other things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?” (2 Cor. 11:24–29).

Paul centered his life on Our Lord. He found joy not in the absence of difficulties, but in the presence of Christ. After he had spent only a few days with the disciples in Damascus, even though he had suffered a great deal for Christ, at the end of his days he was able to write: “For as we share in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Cor. 1:5).

The persecutor, once he had been transformed by grace, went on to receive Christian instruction and baptism from a man, Ananias, in accordance with the ordinary ways of providence. Once Paul realizes that Christ is all that really matters in his life, we see him give himself immediately with all his strength to making the good news known to others. Without any concern for the danger, tribulations, sufferings, and apparent failures that may assail him. He knows that he is the instrument chosen to take the Gospel to many people.

He says to the Galatians: “But he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles” (Gal. 1:15–16). St. Augustine says that prior to his encounter with Christ, Paul’s passionate zeal was like an impenetrable jungle, but that although it was a great obstacle, it nevertheless showed the fertility of the soil. St. Augustine says, “Then God sowed in that soil the seed of the Gospel, and the fruits it bore were multitudinous.”

What happened to Paul can happen to everyone, however serious his or her faults may have been. It is the mysterious action of grace that doesn’t change nature, but heals it, purifies it, elevates it, and perfects it. St. Paul is convinced that God counted on him from the very moment of his conception. “Before I was born,” he repeats on several occasions. In Scripture, we find many places where it said that God chooses, even before their birth, those who he is to send. In this way, God shows that the initiative comes from him and precedes any personal merit.

St. Paul carefully draws attention to this point. He explains to the Christians in Ephesus this pre-selection by God. He even tells them that “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). To Timothy, he says it even more specifically: “He called us with a holy calling, not in virtue of our works, but in virtue of his own purpose” (2 Tim. 1:9).

A vocation is a divine gift that God has prepared from all eternity. That’s why when God made known his vocation to him in Damascus, Paul did not ask for advice from flesh and blood. He didn’t consult any man, because he was certain that God himself had called him. He did not heed the counsel of the prudence of the flesh, but was totally generous with God. His self-giving was immediate, complete, and unconditional.

When the apostles heard Christ’s invitation to them, they too left their nets immediately. Leaving all things, they followed the Master. Saul, the ex-persecutor of the Christians, now follows Our Lord with similarly decisive promptitude. Each of us, in his or her own different way, has received a specific call to serve God. Throughout our lives, we receive new invitations to follow him in our own circumstances. We have to be generous with Our Lord in each new encounter with him.

We have to know how to ask Jesus in the intimacy of our prayer like St. Paul, “What shall I do, Lord? What do you want me to leave for your sake? What do you want me to improve in? At this moment of my life, what can I do to serve you?”

God calls St. Paul by means of very extraordinary signs. But the effect they had on him was the same as that which is brought about by the specific call God makes to many individuals to follow him in the midst of their secular activities. God calls all Christians to sanctity and to apostolate. It’s a vocation which is demanding and in many cases heroic, because God does not want lukewarm followers, second-rate disciples.

But Christ calls some to dedicate themselves in a special way to spreading his kingdom among all men. At the same time, they continue with their own ordinary duties in the world. As each one of us responds to the specific vocation to which he or she has been called, we have to grasp the apostolic meaning of our lives if we want to be disciples of the Master. This can lead us not to waste any opportunity of bringing others closer to Christ, and a growing friendship with him, which at the same time gives them joy and peace and leads them to experience fulfillment in their lives.

The apostolate was for Paul, and is for every Christian who really lives his vocation, an important part of his life—you could say an integral part of his life. Work becomes apostolate, and a desire to make Christ known. So too with sickness, and with our leisure; with pain and with rest. At the same time, this apostolic zeal is a food that we cannot do without if we are to get to know Christ. Knowing Our Lord intimately leads necessarily to communicating this discovery of him to others.

This communication, said St. Josemaría, is the sure sign that you have really given yourself. When following Christ is a reality in our lives, there comes the need to spread out; to do, give, to speak, to transmit to others one’s own treasure, one’s own fire.

St. Paul VI said the apostolate becomes the progressive expansion of the soul in the exuberance of a personality identified with Christ and animated by his Spirit. We feel the need for urgency, the need to work, to try everything possible to spread God’s kingdom for the salvation of others, of all men.

St. Paul said to the Corinthians, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). When we take the good news to others, we are fulfilling the command that Christ gave us: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole of creation” (Mark 16:15). Then too our interior life is enriched, like the plant that receives the water it needs at the right time.

St. Paul gives us an example today and helps us to examine ourselves as to the degree of our determination to bring others a little closer to Christ. Identified with Christ, the supreme discovery of his life, with him who came “not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28), in this way the apostle becomes the servant of all to win as many as he can. St. Paul says to the disciples at Corinth, “To the Jews I became a Jew in order to win the Jews. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:20, 22).

Today we ask him to procure for us a big heart like his, so that we can overlook any small humiliations or the apparent failures that any apostolate brings with it. We tell Jesus that we are ready to live in fellowship with all, and to offer to all the possibility of getting to know Christ, without being too concerned about the sacrifices and the trouble this may cause us.

St. Paul encouraged Timothy and all of us to speak about God opportune et importune. Whether the occasion is right or not, in season and out of season. That’s to say when circumstances are unfavorable. “For the time is coming,” he says, “when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim. 4:3–4).

It might seem as though St. Paul was actually present in our own day. “But you,” he says to Timothy, and in him to every Christian, “always be ready, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Tim. 4:5). Priests will do this mainly through the preaching of the word, through their personal example, their charity, the advice they give in the Sacrament of Penance. Lay people, who are the great majority of the people of God, generally spread his word through friendship, with their kindly advice, with the conversation they have in private with this or that friend, who seems to be getting further and further away from God, or who has never been close to him.

We have to be careful lest we find ourselves getting further and further away from God through coldness or indifference. We do it all in the place where we study or work, or during our summer holidays. Parents with their children, seizing the best moment, or creating the right opportunity. St. John Paul II encouraged young people, and every Christian who is a bearer of Christ, to call all of them to an intense apostolate, that is direct and cheerful.

He said, “Be deeply friends of Jesus and take to your family, your school, the district where you live, the example of a Christian life which is pure and cheerful. Be always young Christians, true witnesses to the Christ, to Christ’s teaching. Moreover, be bearers of Christ in this disturbed society which needs him today more than ever. Announce to everyone by your lives that Christ alone is the true salvation of mankind.”

We can ask St. Paul today: teach us to turn into the right situation, whatever situation that may present itself to us. The Second Vatican Council says even those who travel abroad for international activities, on business or on holiday, should keep in mind that no matter where they may be, they are traveling messengers of Christ and should bear themselves truly as such.

We have to behave with the openness that can only be conveyed by a soul who has made Christ the axis around which everything in his life turns and is organized. Even children—what good instruments of the Holy Spirit they can be. They have their own apostolic activity, for in their own measure they can be true living witnesses of Christ among their companions. St. Thomas Aquinas says the apostle’s untiring apostolic work is quite amazing, staggering, wonderful. Everybody who loves Christ as Paul did will feel the same need to make him known. “For what men much admire, they later divulge; since from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

We can ask Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, to let us come to understand better that the apostolate is a joyous undertaking, even though it may demand sacrifice. Mary, we ask you for an awareness of the great responsibility we have towards all our fellow men, especially those whom we may meet every day.

I thank you my God for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW