Divine Love and Mercy: The Conversion of St. Paul
Saturday, January 25th Readings Reflection: Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, Apostle
Today is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, which commemorates that great saint’s conversion from a persecutor of Christians to an eventual martyr for the Faith. Originally named Saul, St. Paul originally persecuted Christians; the Acts of the Apostles even tells us that “Saul was consenting to [St. Stephen’s] death” (Act 7:59 DRB). However, St. Paul dramatically encountered Christ in a blazing light that left him temporarily blind. Through the light, he heard a Voice that said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou [M]e?… I am Jesus of Nazareth, [W]hom thou persecutest” (Act 22:7-8).
Blinded by the light, St. Paul asked Our Lord what he was to do; Jesus gave him instructions to go to Damascus, where St. Paul was soon baptized and received into the Church. From that moment on, St. Paul devoted himself tirelessly to spreading the Faith, using his own experience as proof that God’s mercy is infinite. Despite the many sufferings that St. Paul experienced as a result of his new faith, he was filled with a deep joy, rejoicing in his sufferings with the knowledge that He was participating in the sufferings of Christ (cf. Col 1:24).
In a sermon about St. Paul, St. John Chrysostom identified the cause of the great apostle’s joy: “The most important thing of all to [St. Paul]…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…than to be without that love and be among the great and honored.”
St. Paul’s conviction of God’s love for him was so great that joy filled his life as a result. While St. Paul’s conversion story is very dramatic, each one of us has experienced the same Divine Mercy in our own lives. At our baptisms, God brought us from a state of spiritual death to the life of sanctifying grace. While we hopefully never had the misfortune to commit a deliberate mortal sin before our baptisms, being in Original Sin is in itself a state of spiritual deadness, as no grace inhabits the soul.
After Baptism, if we have ever had the misfortune to fall into mortal sin, God’s infinite mercy has once again brought our souls from death to life if we have received the Sacrament of Penance worthily. While St. Paul heard Christ’s voice through the blinding light, we hear Christ speaking to us through the priest in the confessional as he advises us and absolves us in persona Christi.
Although few of us experience God’s mercy in such a visibly dramatic way as did St. Paul, our encounters with Divine Mercy are nonetheless equally dramatic on the spiritual level. Rather than falling into the temptation to compare our blessings with those of the great saints, such as St. Paul, may we instead be filled with gratitude at God’s infinite mercy that calls the greatest sinners to be the greatest saints. May we also be grateful for the effects of God’s Divine Mercy in our own lives, which has brought us from spiritual death to the life of grace and which continues to offer us the forgiveness of our sins no matter how many times we may fall.
St. Paul, ora pro nobis!
