Learning from and Imitating Paul’s Deeper Conversion, January 25, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul
January 25, 2021
Acts 9:1-22, Ps 117, Mt 16:15-18

Because of a malfunctioning of the recording device, the homily was not recorded. The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Yesterday on the Sunday of the Word of God, we had a chance with the whole Church to ponder Jesus’ inaugural homily, all 15 words of it in Greek, and how his first word that the Word made flesh proclaimed was metanoete, turn your mind around, repent and believe. We saw the total repentance of the Ninevites as they turned from debauchery to humble sackcloth and ashes, because they knew, as St. Paul announced in the second reading, that the time was short. We saw the revolution that took place in the lives of Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John, as they turned away from their boats, their nets, their fish, their family members, and followed Jesus and were later sent out by him as fishers of men. The Word of God has that power, to bring about a total change in life, so that one might look at all of reality from God’s perspective and live it.
• Today on this feast of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus — one of the most important events in the history of the world because of the impact this one man had, post-conversion, in spreading the Gospel all over the known world at the time and whose writings have deeply influenced all of Christian theology — we see the type of revolution meeting Christ on the road to Damascus had on him.
• HIs shocking conversion was, at least partially, the miraculous result of St. Stephen’s prayers. When the first Christian martyr was being stoned to death outside the Jerusalem Gate that now bears his name, the stone-throwing assassins were all laying their cloaks at the feet of Saul, showing that he was presiding over the execution. St. Stephen prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” as he was asking Jesus to receive his spirit, echoing Jesus’ own words from the Cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” These prayers — Stephen’s and Jesus’ — were heard. God didn’t hold this sin against Saul. And Jesus Christ met him on the road to Damascus to give him through that forgiveness the gift of conversion.
• His shocking conversion was not principally the superficial change from being a persecutor of Christians to a proclaimer of Christ, from a murderer of the faithful to a maker. It wasn’t from an immoral life far from God to a moral one. As Pope Benedict XVI stressed, it was from a false notion of a holy life to a true notion. Paul had been from his young days a zealous follower of God. He had come down from Turkey to Jerusalem to study at the feet of the greatest rabbi of the age, Gamaliel. As a young man, he had such zeal to keep the community of Israel together that he made it his mission to try to stomp out the heretical sect that was dividing Judaism and blasphemously claiming that a carpenter from Nazareth not only was the Messiah but the Son of God, one who said he would destroy the holy Temple. That’s why he was terrorizing Christians. In the persecution of the Church, he was the furthest thing, for example, from Herod, who hunted down the baby Jesus in order to preserve his own privileges. Paul’s conversion was, rather, from an erroneous notion that we are saved by our external adhesion to all the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law, to the true one that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We are saved by Christ’s work, not our own.
• We can also say, on the heels of the Sunday of the Word of God, that Saul, despite his scholarship, had a defective notion of what was contained in the Word of God and where it was leading. He was kicking against the goad” (Acts 26:14), as Jesus said to him, meaning rebelling against the stick used to drive cattle, because he was not following where the “goad” of the Word of God was ultimately leading him.
• That leads to the deeper level of his conversion and the deepest essence of any thorough Christian conversion. It was a death and resurrection. After St. Paul met the Lord 137 miles north of Jerusalem in Damascus where the Christian community was strong, after he was blinded and needed to walk by faith, he was baptized by Ananias and the scales fell from his eyes, a sign not just of a capacity to see things in the new light of Christ that had previous blinded him but a death and resurrection. He would later write to the Romans, with words we hear every Easter Vigil, “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (Rom 6:3-4). To convert means to die to the old Adam in us so that the new Adam might rise. That is not just a one-time sacramental act, but a life-time moral one. St. Paul would himself testify to this when he would later write in his letter to the Christians in Galatia, “I have been crucified with Christ and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal 2:20). The metanoia, the revolution in the way we look at the world and live, the true conversion God is asking of any of us, and the deepest meaning of holiness is to die to ourselves so that the Risen Christ truly can live within us, reign within us, sanctify and save us and make us his instruments to co-redeem the world.  Holiness is union with God. Since we are saved by grace, and grace is not a thing but a participation as a creature in the life of the Creator, Christian conversion must be ongoing, because it’s based on a continuous encounter with the Lord, as he seeks in us to form us more and more in his image with our free fiat. It’s a death and resurrection. It’s a new life. It’s Christ crucified and risen living in us. Pope Benedict preached, “Paul never once interprets this moment as an event of conversion. … It was … rather a death and a resurrection for Paul himself. One existence died and another, new one was born with the Risen Christ. … This powerful encounter with Christ is the key to understanding what had happened: death and resurrection, renewal on the part of the One who had shown himself and had spoken to him. … In this deeper sense we can and we must speak of conversion. This encounter is a real renewal that changed all his parameters. Now he could say that what had been essential and fundamental for him earlier had become ‘refuse’ for him; it was no longer ‘gain’ but loss, because henceforth the only thing that counted for him was life in Christ.”
• St. Paul’s conversion brings us to consider our own. Many of us have simplistic, superficial notions of conversion, in which we think it means basically just a minor course correction in our life, the elimination of a bad habit. Others of us think it is what we acquire mainly through our own efforts of good deeds. Some others think the goal of it is mainly to be a “good person.” But the ultimate meaning of conversion is to “turn with” Christ in every way, to adopt a new life, to live full-time in communion with him, loving as he loves, being willing to suffer and die with him and rise.
• Today is a day on which we hear Christ calling us to repent and believe and seek to respond as wholeheartedly as the Ninevites, as Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John, as Saul of Tarsus. We pray for the conversion of so many who persecute Christ without even knowing it, like Saul was doing. We pray for those who are caught up in sins for which he was crucified, those who are persecuting his body and making martyrs across the globe. It’s a day for us to pray for our own conversion from any shallow or deficient understanding of the holy life to which God is calling us. It’s a day in which we pray for the grace, like St. Paul, to be so converted that we will say, “Woe to me” if I do not share this gift!
• The great strength of Paul came from his encounter with Jesus Christ not merely on the road to Damascus but every time he, with the early Church, “took bread,  and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’”  The same Lord who met him at the city gates of that Syrian capital comes here to meet us this morning.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1
ACTS 9:1-22

Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord,
went to the high priest and asked him
for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, that,
if he should find any men or women who belonged to the Way,
he might bring them back to Jerusalem in chains.
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?”
He said, “Who are you, sir?”
The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.”
The men who were traveling with him stood speechless,
for they heard the voice but could see no one.
Saul got up from the ground,
but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing;
so they led him by the hand and brought him to Damascus.
For three days he was unable to see, and he neither ate nor drank.

There was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias,
and the Lord said to him in a vision, AAnanias.”
He answered, “Here I am, Lord.”
The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight
and ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul.
He is there praying,
and in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias
come in and lay his hands on him,
that he may regain his sight.”
But Ananias replied,
“Lord, I have heard from many sources about this man,
what evil things he has done to your holy ones in Jerusalem.
And here he has authority from the chief priests
to imprison all who call upon your name.”
But the Lord said to him,
“Go, for this man is a chosen instrument of mine
to carry my name before Gentiles, kings, and children of Israel,
and I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.”
So Ananias went and entered the house;
laying his hands on him, he said,
“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.”
Immediately things like scales fell from his eyes
and he regained his sight.
He got up and was baptized,
and when he had eaten, he recovered his strength.

He stayed some days with the disciples in Damascus,
and he began at once to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues,
that he is the Son of God.
All who heard him were astounded and said,
“Is not this the man who in Jerusalem
ravaged those who call upon this name,
and came here expressly to take them back in chains
to the chief priests?”
But Saul grew all the stronger
and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus,
proving that this is the Christ.

Responsorial Psalm
PS 117:1BC, 2

R. (Mark 16:15) Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.

Praise the LORD, all you nations;
glorify him, all you peoples!

R. Go out to all the world, and tell the Good News.

For steadfast is his kindness toward us,
and the fidelity of the LORD endures forever.

R. Go out to all the world, and tell the Good News.

Gospel MK 16:15-18

Jesus appeared to the Eleven and said to them:
“Go into the whole world
and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved;
whoever does not believe will be condemned.
These signs will accompany those who believe:
in my name they will drive out demons,
they will speak new languages.
They will pick up serpents with their hands,
and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them.
They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”