(Audio)
On his journey, as he was nearing Damascus,
a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him.
He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him,
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
Hopefully the LORD doesn't need to knock us to the ground and blind us to get our attention. But he does want our attention. No matter how dramatic was the conversion of Saint Paul compared to our own often much more mundane experiences the resulting conversion is meant to be the same.
“Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me,
Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came,
that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
The LORD gives us new sight and fills us with the Holy Spirit just as he did for Paul. To appreciate this it helps to be aware of the metaphorical blindness that we all suffer without Jesus and the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is a blindness such that even when we try to do good things we often end up doing just the opposite.
‘I am Jesus the Nazorean whom you are persecuting.’
The Holy Spirit enlightens our hearts and teaches us how to love. He reveals the ways in which our old attempts at justice were actually persecution. The body of Jesus, the Church, still endures this persecution on a large scale when it proclaims the message of the love of Christ. It is precisely then that we see our supposed freedom of religion constrained and apparently on the verge of collapse. But even within the Church, those who make the call to love more intimate, more explicit, and more present, still risk alienating those members who are just coasting on the status quo. So we need to pray that the world experiences the conversion of heart that Paul did. But we ourselves also need an ever deeper conversion.
As for Paul, Jesus has plans for us.
‘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.
Like Paul, we are chosen instruments of Jesus, to carry his name before Gentiles, kings, and children of Israel. We too will encounter suffering. Like Paul, we can suffer for the sake of the name of Jesus.
Let us ask for a deeper conversion, a more clear spiritual sight from the eyes of our hearts, and for more of the Holy Spirit.
“Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me,
Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came,
that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
May we, like Paul, be transformed into Spirit filled evangelists, spreading the Gospel far and wide.
Go into the whole world
and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.
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