Paul's Conversion

 

In the midst of every conflict and division that the human heart can contrive, the Spirit of Jesus always seeks to draw us together and make us one. How often we resist; insisting that we know better, our individual plan will work best.

Overwhelmed by the nearness of the persecuted Jesus calling to him and blinded by the divine radiance, Paul falls to the ground, helpless and needy at last; all his old answers suddenly meaningless.

That’s what it took for Christ Jesus to get Paul’s attention and change his heart. What will it take to break our hearts open- as churches, nations, individuals? What have we heard and seen that will make us understand once and for all that unity, forgiveness, blessed compromise, and deferring to one another out of love for Christ surpass everything?

As we complete this Octave of Prayer for Unity, let us pray that now, today we would listen to his voice and harden not our hearts, so that all may be one in him.

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The most important thing of all to him was that he knew himself to be loved by Christ. Enjoying this love, he considered himself happier than anyone else; were he without it, it would be no satisfaction to be the friend of principalities and powers. He preferred to be thus loved and be the least of all, or even to be among the damned than to be without that love and be among the great and honored.

To be separated from that love was, in his eyes, the greatest and most extraordinary of torments; the pain of that loss would alone have been hell, and endless, unbearable torture.  So too, in being loved by Christ he thought of himself as possessing life, the world, the angels, present and future, the kingdom, the promise and countless blessings. Apart from that love nothing saddened or delighted him; for nothing earthly did he regard as bitter or sweet.

Paul set no store by the things that fill our visible world, any more than a man sets value on the withered grass of the field. As for tyrannical rulers or the people enraged against him, he paid them no more heed than gnats. Death itself and pain and whatever torments might come were but child’s play to him, provided that thereby he might bear some burden for the sake of Christ.   

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Conversion on the Way to Damascus, oil on canvas, 1600-01, Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.  Quotation by Saint John Chrysostom.