Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, Apostle

 Lectionary: 519

“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:

 W ith as many as 1.39 billion Catholics in the world, and perhaps 2.4 billion Christians, no one can say the Gospel has utterly failed, unless they're applying another arbitrary standard. But the wars continue unabated, and the chasm that Lazarus could not cross remains. Despite the obvious increase in numbers, and innumerable philosophical, organizational, and technological changes little has changed in two millennia. The song of Bethlehem's angels is only a promise.

Today we celebrate the day when Saint Paul realized the insanity of his beliefs and actions, and immediately repented. It came as a revelation to him -- "a great light from the sky suddenly shone around me" -- he never called it a conversion. He may have been prepared for it by the death of Saint Stephen. As a citizen of the Roman city of Tarsus, he had never seen someone stoned to death. It's a horrible business for victims and tormentors alike, and the urbane young fellow might have been deeply troubled by it. "Is this anyway to promote our faith in God?" Stephen's cheerful equanimity shocked more than a few people. 

And then the young Paul probably found similar equanimity in the people he was harassing. They were following in the bloody footsteps of Jesus, and doing it both calmly and confidently. How did that make sense? How was this devout Jew supposed to understand it? 

So he was ready when the Lord smote him on the road to Damascus. "When the student is ready the teacher will appear.” says the Tao Te Ching. 

The Work of the Gospel requires intense prayer, preparation, dedication, and sacrifice; and then much patience. Anyone can say the Gospel has failed but words like failure and success apparently do not apply. They mean nothing. We take up a project as the Spirit directs us, and stay with it so long as the Spirit remains. The Catholic church has surely seen millions of devotions to innumerable saints, angels, the Virgin, and to the inseparable persons of the Trinity. No one can count them all, much less practice them. We recite those prayers and sing those songs the Lord gives us day by day. 

We follow where the Lord leads our hearts. Very often those who have left the Church return to discover we're not praying like we used to. Had they remained with us throughout, they probably would have moved with us; and they're always welcome to rediscover where we are now. The Church of the 1950's may have been well-organized and prosperous but it supported few food kitchens for street people and shelters for pregnant women. There was less need at the time. There is today. 

We pray that we will hear the Word of God speak to us today as it spoke to Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. Hopefully it will be less dramatic but just as compelling.