Feast of the Conversion of S. Paul

Acts 26:9-21
Galatians 1:11-24
Matthew 10:16-21

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL and for most of my college years, I could not abide Christianity. I was proudly, and outspokenly, an enemy of Christ and the gospel. The Christian endeavor struck me not only as pointless, but positively destructive to our humanity. My understanding of Christianity, of course, was full of misconceptions, in part because of my pride and arrogance and also because much of the Christianity I was exposed to was dour, simplistic, humorless, anti-intellectual, limiting, intolerant. . . My list could go on. I wrongly thought that Christians, in their spiritual earnestness, didn't value fun, irony, and physical pleasure. Eventually I encountered catholic Christianity and recognized that Christianity was all about enhancing our humanity; that the spiritual and the physical were deeply intertwined; that much of Christianity was subtle, deep, refined; and, most importantly, that my existence didn't matter without Christ.

S. Paul had his great conversion experience on the Damascus Road. My grandfather told me that he had a powerful conversion experience in a barn, a moment at which he knew Jesus loved him. Last week, we had a visitor at our noon mass; he seemed to be a sophisticated professional. We got to talking, and I asked a nosey question. He told me about his years as an atheist, reflexively and compulsively giving grief to his Christian friends. (I knew that game quite well.) Over years, he began to tire of that arid way of seeing and experiencing life. On a trip to Italy, in a small hill town north of Florence, he had to be taken to the hospital. He was fortuitously diagnosed and realized that he had no reason for alarm. While lying in bed in his hospital room, he noticed a crucifix on the wall, and upon seeing that crucifix a peace descended upon him, not a peace merely dispelling anxiety about his health, but a greater peace, a peace about life, an intimation of God's love. He said that he did not recognize that moment as a religious experience at the time, but now he knows it was. He believes it was of the Holy Spirit. It makes me a bit jealous. I certainly don't doubt that these events happen and that they are real, but I've never experienced one of these 'mountain-top experiences,' and definitely not a dramatic conversion experience like Paul's. Perhaps, I'd be too skeptical to believe it if it did happen.

I do remember one evening in college getting ready for a party and walking across my dorm room and all of a sudden thinking, "God exists! God has to exist." It was a moment of epiphany for me. The scales sort of fell from my eyes. For an atheist, or an agnostic, there's got to be some moment when you switch sides, when you cross the fence, and once I did, I very gradually began to re-order my thinking and values. I had to. Once we accept God, we are no longer at the center of existence - God is, and we fit ourselves into his scheme, his plan. Human beings revolve around God, not the other way around. It's sort of what Copernicus discovered: once we recognized the earth wasn't the center of the universe, but rather the earth revolved around the sun, then we had to re-order our entire cosmology.

I do not credit my discovery of God as my own work. To the contrary, God opens our eyes; he makes the scales fall away. What Christianity has to say about someone's conversion to Christ is quite a bit like what Alcoholics Anonymous has to say about alcoholics giving up drink, that it is a work of God, or of a higher power, not of man. A.A. says:

Most emphatically we wish to say that any alcoholic capable of honestly facing his problems . . . can recover, provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual concepts. He can only be defeated by an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial. . . . Willingness, honesty, and open mindedness are the essentials of recovery. These are indispensable. ⁽¹⁾

What AA says about recovery, we can say about conversion. God's trying to convert all of us, all of the time, but we get in the way. We are the problem. Unless we're willing and honest and open, God can't reach us. We have freewill. We can close God out of our lives. Or we can open to him.

This is not only important for non-believers. Hardly! Conversion is not a one off experience or event. It ought to be a characteristic of our entire life in Christ. If we are growing and maturing as Christians, our conversion is always being renewed and deepened. We have to be willing and honest and open to growth, to change, to development, to understanding in new ways. There may be a dramatic or poignant moment in our conversion, but that is not an end. Rather, it's a new beginning, an opportunity for further growth. Christian life is dynamic.

In ways, conversion is simply a moment in life when we experience the power of God and are transformed. Paul began his journey to Jerusalem in a position of power and prominence, but after being thrown to ground and blinded, Paul is helpless, weak. He becomes dependent upon the very people he was going to persecute. He becomes one of those who will be persecuted. Paul's methods change: from use of force and violence as a persecutor to use of wit and wisdom and persuasion, through preaching and example. The Church and the world have different ways. Jewish Christians and Gentiles had been Paul's enemy, the target of his animosity, and they become the purpose of his life, to let them know God's love. The Gentiles become the object of his love and energy. Encountering Christ re-orders Paul's life; Jesus turns Paul's life upside down.

We celebrate S. Paul's conversion at this time of the year because its themes complement Epiphany so nicely. Paul is led from darkness to light; he goes from spiritual blindness to seeing Christ as well as from literal blindness to sight. The Epiphany is the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. It is Paul who becomes in charge of preaching Christ to the Gentiles. One of the ways Paul makes Christ known is by telling his story.

Paul had held the cloaks of those who had stoned S. Stephen to death. He then went to the high priests of Jerusalem and sought from them a commission and authority to go to Damascus to arrest Christians there. Paul wanted the followers of Jesus to curse Jesus, that is to blaspheme God and to disown the Christian faith. A lot of former atheists, this one included, have shared that perverse desire, and like Paul, we're not afraid to confess it. We're not afraid to confess it because God has changed us. God has renewed us. We know the power and mercy of God.

In Paul's speech to King Agrippa, he tells about his conversion, about how Christ changed him, and about how God now wants him to go the Gentiles and to do the same thing for them. What is this change? First, Jesus opens our eyes so that we see life in a new way, seeing with hope and confidence, with certainty that God loves us and that we are lovable. Second, he turns us from darkness to light. We repent, that is we turn around our course in life 180 degrees. We become more certain about why we exist, what our purpose is, and so what is honorable and right. Third, he turns us from the power of evil to the power of God. In Christ we can develop a greater capacity to love ourselves and our neighbors; we can know God's love for us; we can know true peace; we can become more human. Fourth, he forgives our sins and joins us to the sanctified, to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We can escape the sin of our past and have our lives renewed and purified. In a sense these four things, these elements of conversion, are part of process that we go through again and again in life.

Paul's conversion is also a calling, a vocation. God gives him something to do, namely to go out and preach the gospel. That's what all Christians are called to do. The twelfth step of AA is: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we [try] to carry this message to alcoholics." In other words, something good has happened to them, and it's their responsibility to share that goodness. They've experienced the power of God and had their lives handed back to them and their sanity renewed. That's conversion, and every Christian should know this feeling. It fills us with gratitude. And we express our gratitude by sharing the good news.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

1. Alcoholics Anonymous, "Spiritual Experience," Appendix II of The Big Book, available at http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_appendiceII.cfm