The Conversion of Saint Paul
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Second Week in Ordinary Time
Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle
Acts 22:3-16 or Acts 9:1-22/Mk 16:15-18 (Lectionary #519)
Acts 22:3-16 tells us of the encounter with Jesus that ruled all Paul did, said and wrote as an apostle. This same encounter should also shape everything we say, do and are. If we have heard the Good News.
Like us, Paul never saw the historical Jesus. The Jesus who spoke to him on the road was the same risen Jesus who speaks to us in prayer and through the Spirit in our hearts. And Paul did not see him; just a “great light from heaven.” And he “heard a voice.” The light he saw with his senses was not as real or as great at the light of faith given to us at Baptism. And the voice he heard was no more the voice of God than the voice that speaks to us through the Scriptures. In other words, although Paul met Jesus in a different way, his encounter was not more real than ours is. So our encounter with Jesus should have the same effect.
Paul was enlightened, yes. From that moment he knew two things that ruled the rest of his life: 1. He was sent. 2. Christians are “in” Christ and Christ is in them. The Jesus Paul met on the road is present in and identified with every person who becomes a member of his body by faith and Baptism. The Jesus Paul preached was the Jesus of mystery, the Jesus who is the “head of the body, the Church; the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:8). He is the Jesus into whose death and resurrection we were incorporated by Baptism. Paul was perfectly clear about his mission. It was to proclaim:
the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known… the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:26-27).
Don’t we know all this? Don’t we know it just as certainly as Paul? The light of faith in us is just as much a “great light from heaven” as the one Paul saw. But he was blinded by his until, like us, he presented himself to the Church and was baptized (Acts 9:17-19). And don’t we know we are sent to proclaim what we have seen? Pope Paul VI said, “The Church exists to evangelize.” We are the Church.
In Mark 16:15-18 Jesus tells his apostles, and through them every member of his body on earth, “Go out to all the world and proclaim the Good News to the whole creation.”
“The whole creation” means every place where people are: at home, at work, at sports events and parties, on dates and business trips, in professional life and politics. This is the “apostolate of the laity” who “live in the midst of the world and its concerns [and so] are called by God to exercise their apostolate in the world like leaven” (Vatican II, Lay Apostolate, no. 2).
These “signs” will make their witness credible: They will be immune to the “poison” they drink in daily from the culture, speak a “different language” than their peer group, and “heal” situations they have a hand in. In other words, they will be different.
Initiative: Acknowledge your encounter with Jesus. Proclaim what you know.
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