The Conversion of St. Paul

I love these feast days that are dedicated not just to a saint, but to a particular aspect of that saint’s life or ministry. We have the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist, which focuses out attention on his martyrdom. We have the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, which focuses our attention on his authority. And today we have the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, which focuses our attention — of course — on his conversion.

We tend to think of Paul as the great evangelizer. He is the Apostle to the Gentiles, the one who more than any other took the gospel message of Christ out into the broader, non-Jewish world. He wrote most of the New Testament. His teaching, more than any other Apostle, has shaped and informed our understanding of the Christian faith. But before this great evangelizer could make converts of anyone, he himself had to be converted.

To convert means to be turned around; to make an about face. It involves great change in our lives, and change can be difficult. It can be scary. We are often afraid to change not just because changing long-standing practices and ideas can be hard, and not just because admitting we were wrong can be hard. We are afraid to change very often because we are afraid to loose part of ourselves. We are afraid of letting go of who we are.

But conversion to Christ doesn’t involve losing our identity, but finding it. It doesn’t require us to become a different person, but to change our orientation.

Paul was a Pharisee, and a great one. He was zealous for God. More than any other Pharisee, he was passionate about following God’s will. Pharisees get a bad rap today because we usually only hear their name in conjunction with Christ’s condemnations of them. But Christ was not condemning them because they were Pharisees, but because they were hypocrites. The Pharisees preached a strict adherence to the law, but too many of them didn’t bother to follow it themselves, or followed only the letter of the law and not the spirit. But this was not St. Paul. Paul was passionate in his observance of the law and held himself to the highest standards. He testifies to this in his letter to the Galatians: “I made progress in Jewish observance far beyond most of my contemporaries, in my excess of zeal to live out all the traditions of my ancestors” (Gal 1:14).

Paul was persecuting the Church precisely because he was so zealous for God’s law, and he thought those who followed Christ, the followers of “the Way,” were violating that law. He thought God’s law demanded their persecution. Paul’s desire to do the right thing was admirable, but he was simply blind to what was being revealed in Christ. Christ had to blind him in order to get him to see.

Once Paul did see the truth, he followed Christ with no hesitation. Paul’s zeal was still there. Paul still had the natural gifts that God had given him. But now those gifts were correctly oriented. They had been realigned with God’s will, and so brought to perfection. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, grace builds upon nature.

Every conversion involves aligning our human will to the divine will. And we actually have two examples of this in our reading from Acts today (Acts 9:1–22); Paul and Ananias. Both of these men had to make a decision to follow God’s will in a way they found challenging. Paul had to reorient his whole life; going from persecuting the Church to helping it grow; from suppressing the gospel to preaching it. But Ananias also had to “go against the grain” to follow God’s will. He had to reach out to a man infamous for his hatred of Christians. He had to reach out in love to someone he thought would have him arrested or killed, and call that man his “brother.” He had to trust God, and even though Ananias was already Christian, this act required conversion.

Because conversion is not a one-time event. It is ongoing. Conversion involves our human will cooperating with God’s grace and this is something we must choose to do every day. Sometimes God might call us to be like St. Paul and spread the good news to those who have never heard it before. And sometimes God might call us to be like Ananias, to reach out to support a brother or sister in Christ.

God may use us to call others to conversion, but we also have to realize that the only ones we can really convert is ourselves. Because conversion is an act of the will and we can’t control anyone else’s will — and God wouldn’t want us to if we could. We can only control our will. We can only decide for ourselves to follow Christ. But in following Christ, we become agents of the Spirit — instruments of God’s grace — prompting and encourage others in the Way. God works through us. We are the body of Christ, which is why Jesus asks Paul, “Why are you persecuting me?” We belong to Christ, and so must do the work of Christ. And to do that, our will must be aligned with his.

So as we reflect upon conversion today, I invite you to ask, How am I like St. Paul? Are there areas in my life where I need to make a radical reorientation to God? Am I using my God-given passions and talents to go in the wrong direction? Do I need to turn around and make some big changes?

And ask, How am I like Ananias? Is there something God is prompting me to do to help a fellow Christian, someone in the parish, in my family, in my community, that I just don’t want to do because it seems difficult? Is there something God may be asking me to do that I’m hesitating on because it seems foolish, or I don’t think I have the skills or talent needed, or the time? Do I need to trust in God more in any area of my life?

As we thank God for the conversion of St. Paul, let us pray for conversions today — for the conversions of our family and friends, of our broader community. Let us commit ourselves to increasing our own evangelical efforts. Let us pray for the continuing conversion of the Church. And let us pray especially for our own ongoing conversion, so that day by day we may recommit ourselves to Christ, and align our own will with the will of our Heavenly Father.