The occasional, often ill-considered thoughts of a Roman Catholic permanent deacon who is ever grateful to God for his existence. Despite the strangeness we encounter in this life, all the suffering we witness and endure, being is good, so good I am sometimes unable to contain my joy. Deo gratias!


Although I am an ordained deacon of the Catholic Church, the opinions expressed in this blog are my personal opinions. In offering these personal opinions I am not acting as a representative of the Church or any Church organization.

Thursday, January 27, 2022

Homily: Conversion of St. Paul

Readings: Acts 22:3-16; Ps 117; Mk 16:15-18                          

The call to conversion by Jesus can come at the most inopportune times. Recall how Peter and Andrew, James and John were working hard at their profession as fishermen when Jesus showed up and called them away.

“Follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men” [Mk 1:17].

They probably didn’t have a clue about what this would mean for them, but they followed, nonetheless.

Then there was Matthew, the tax-collector. He had a sweet deal going, collecting taxes for the Romans, and pocketing plenty of cash for himself. But Jesus comes along and simply says, “Follow me!”, and Matthew drops everything [Mk 2:14].

Imagine what their friends and relatives thought. You’re doing what? With whom? And you’re leaving everything behind…your business, your family, everything?

Called by Jesus these practical, down-to-earth men willingly gave up everything for something they did not yet understand. Yes, Jesus wasn’t just some itinerant preacher. Obviously, there was something very different about Him, something beyond normal human experience.

Imagine, too, what the future apostles thought when John the Baptist pointed out Jesus to them: "Behold! The Lamb of God!" [Jn 1:29] Behold the sacrificial lamb, the one who will give His life for the world. Jesus was something more than special. He was, as Peter would later profess, “The Christ, the Son of the Living God!” [Mt 16:16]

But not everyone agreed. One was a young Jew named Saul. He was a Pharisee, a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, a native of the cosmopolitan city of Tarsus in the region of Celicia in Asia Minor. As Paul later described it, Tarsus was “no mean city” [Acts 21:39].

Yes, indeed, Saul was no peasant. Paul’s family was apparently distinguished enough that the emperor had made them Roman citizens, a rare honor. And for his fellow Jews, he had the prestige of being schooled by the famous and learned Gamaliel.

As a Pharisee, now in Jerusalem, Saul had no patience for the new and dangerous sect that worshiped this Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah and Son of God. What a blasphemy! This Jesus could be only a false Messiah, for He had been crucified as a criminal, and had preached such foolishness as the brotherhood of Jew and Gentile.

Certain of himself and his mission, arrest warrants in hand, Saul was on his way to Damascus, 135 miles distant, to root out the followers of this Jesus and bring them back in chains for prosecution. But it is here, along this road to Damascus, that Jesus calls him. 

Knocked to the ground, blinded, overwhelmed by the voice of God, Saul is accused of persecuting Jesus Himself. But Jesus has plans for Saul. Renamed Paul, he is in God’s own words, “His chosen instrument.” This zealous Jew will now carry Jesus, the living and incarnate Word of God, to the world, to both Jew and Gentile.

Paul’s calling might have been exceptional in manner, but it was really no different from the calling of every Christian. For, just like Paul, we are all called to follow Jesus in holiness, to enter into an ongoing conversion; and like Paul it is our response that makes the difference. We are all called to the apostolate, to be apostles of Jesus Christ, to be the ones who are sent.

God’s voice comes to us all, that inner voice that brings both a calm acceptance and a restlessness to obey. It speaks to us in the words of the prophet, revealing all that God wants of us, dispelling uncertainty and fear, calling us to respond with our entire being.

Can we abandon ourselves, our autonomy? Can we accept that we too are called, we too are chosen to do, to give, to speak, to pass on to others all that He has given us, done for us? Can we make this our prayer? “What would you have me do, Lord? Tell me and I will do it.”

As Pope Paul VI preached: “…it becomes a need to hasten, to work, to do everything one can to spread the Kingdom of God, to save other souls, to save all souls."

Of course, God gives us a choice. But how did St. Paul put it?

Christ Jesus has made me his own” [Phil 3:12].

That’s right, like Paul we belong to Jesus Christ now. To turn away from that would be foolishness indeed.


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