The Fundamental Content of St. Paul's Conversion
by Fr. Roger Landry - January 23, 2009
This Sunday we celebrate one of the highlights of the Year of St. Paul now underway: his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus. Pope Benedict has both authorized and encouraged Catholic priests to celebrate the liturgical feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on Sunday. Normally, when January 25, the annual commemoration of this dramatic scene, falls on a Sunday, it is suppressed, like most saints' feast days, in favor of the Sunday Mass. Pope Benedict has made an exception this year so that all Catholics, as we continue to mark the 2000th anniversary of St. Paul's birth, can focus together on one of the pivotal movements not only in his life but in the history of the Church.
When most people consider St. Paul's conversion, they place it into the category of other great conversions, like those of the greedy tax-collector Matthew in the first century, or the proud, sensualist Augustine in the fourth, or the blood-drenched abortionist Bernard Nathanson in the twentieth. They think that St. Paul's conversion was a metamorphosis from a wicked life to a good one: the one who once terrorized and killed Christians for a living all of a sudden became a Christian and dedicated the rest of his life to making Christians.
Because of this conception, Christians who have always lived a relatively moral life and avoided the slavery of great sins look toward St. Paul's conversion as historically relevant but not personally relevant.
This is, however, a superficial understanding of St. Paul's conversion. As Pope Benedict pointed out in a November 2006 catechesis, St. Paul's conversion was not principally from an evil life to a holy one, but from a false notion of a holy life to a true one.
The "fundamental content of his conversion, the new direction his life took as a result of his encounter with the Risen Christ," the Pope said, was a totally new recognition of how one is saved. Before his conversion, as a Pharisee, he believed that one was saved by doing good works according to the Mosaic law. It was in defense of the Mosaic Law that Paul, with great zeal, persecuted the early Church. After the encounter with the Lord Jesus, however, he realized that holiness depends on the pure grace of God (Rom 3:24).
"Before his conversion," the Pope stressed, "Paul had not been a man distant from God and from his Law. On the contrary, he had been observant, with an observance faithful to the point of fanaticism. In the light of the encounter with Christ, however, he understood that with this he had sought to build up himself and his own justice, and that with all this justice he had lived for himself. He realized that a new approach in his life was absolutely essential. And we find this new approach expressed in his words: 'The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me' (Gal 2:20). Paul, therefore, no longer lives for himself, for his own justice. He lives for Christ and with Christ: in giving of himself, he is no longer seeking to build himself up. This is the new justice, the new orientation given to us by the Lord, given to us by faith."
This is why St. Paul's conversion is personally pertinent to all of us, for so many Christians, like Paul before his conversion, have a false or defective notion of the holy life to which God calls us. Many Catholics think, for example, that all God is asking of us is that we avoid mortal sins. Some approach the Christian life, not as a reciprocally passionate love-life with God, but as merely "obeying the rules." Others, convinced by false modern ideas of eschatology that think that all or most of us go to heaven no matter what we do — in other words, that most of us become saints no matter what — go through life with a shallow prayer life, a weak sacramental life, and a superficial moral life. Many think that they can be good Christians without the Cross, without denying themselves, picking up their Cross each day, and following the Lord even and especially when it is hard (see Mt 16:24).
One of the most common inadequate notions of holiness, however, is the one closest to St. Paul's formerly false understanding. When many who actually seek holiness think about advancing on the path to sanctity, they consider first their own works, their own fidelity to God, their own acts of love. These human acts are all, indisputably, part of the pursuit of holiness, but they are a secondary part. The main means to holiness is given to us by God.
St. John wrote in his first letter, "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he has loved us and handed over his Son as an expiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). We could paraphrase this truth by saying, "In this is holiness, not principally what we do for God but what he has done and does for us." God provides the means. Specifically, he has given us the sacraments to make us holy, because in each of the sacraments we encounter Christ who wishes through them to carry out in us his work of salvation and sanctification. He has given us prayer as a living encounter with the Blessed Trinity so that we might deepen our friendship with each of the three persons and grow into God's holy image and likeness. He has given us the moral life so that, living by the Holy Spirit, become one with Christ through entering into his virtues. In short, holiness is fundamentally not a result of our actions, but a consequence of God's grace, which with his help we seek to receive without resistance.
The type of conversion that the celebration of the conversion of St. Paul is meant to provoke in each of us is a transformation from whatever false or defective notion of the Christian life we have to the true one, whereby, through a continual encounter with Christ, we become gradually united to him who is holiness incarnate. This is what happened with St. Paul, who was eventually able to say, humbly and honestly, to the Galatians, "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20) and to the Philippians, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Phil 1:21). Holiness comes through union with Christ, in whom we can do all things and without whom we can do nothing" (Phil 4:3; Jn 15:5).
To celebrate well the conversion of St. Paul is to seek to convert to become more like St. Paul in total loving adhesion to, and dependence on, God, who wills us to be saved and come to intimate communion with him (1 Tim 4:3). As we prepare solemnly to mark his dramatic conversion on Sunday, St. Paul beckons us, as he once implored the first Christians, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ" (1 Cor 11:1). In other words, "Imitate me in conversion, so that you may imitate me in holiness, just as I imitated the Lord." The same Lord whom Paul met on the road to Damascus we will hear, meet, see in disguise, and possibly even receive on Sunday. May that encounter change our lives like it changed Paul's so that, converted to the truth path of holiness, we, like Paul, may be God's supple instruments through which he may change the world.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
