The Year of Paul
Fr. George Smiga
January 24 – 25, 2009
Mark: 16:15 - 18
Pope Benedict has proclaimed this year the year of Paul. This year we celebrate the 2000 anniversary of Paul’s birth. Paul was one of the two great apostles of the early church; the other one was St. Peter. Peter was one of the 12 apostles and a companion of Jesus during his earthly ministry. But this was not the case with Paul. Paul never met Jesus during Jesus’ earthly life. But he did receive a vision of the risen Christ while he was on the road to Damascus, the story we heard just proclaimed from the book of Acts. That vision of Christ changed Paul’s life. It was Paul’s conversion. Today we celebrate the conversion of St. Paul. Normally this feast is not celebrated on the weekend, but because of the special year the Pope has made an exception.
So tonight we celebrate the conversion of St. Paul and it seems to me that two questions are appropriate: what is Paul converting from and how does Paul’s conversion speak to us?
The first question - What is Paul converting from? If you ask the average person on the street, they would say that Paul converted from Judaism to Christianity. Many people would answer that way, but they would be wrong. Paul did in fact come to believe in Christ, but he never ceased being a Jew. At the time of Paul there was no such thing as Christianity separated from Judaism. Being a Christian in the time of Paul was being a certain kind of Jew. It was only after Paul’s death that Christianity and Judaism emerged as two separate religions.
So Paul remained a Jew his entire life. He is a witness to the heritage that Christians have from Judaism and the common faith in God that Jews and Christians still share to this day. Paul did not convert from Judaism. He converted from persecuting the followers of Jesus. Paul was firmly convinced that Jesus was not the Christ and that those who proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah were perverting Judaism. Paul not only objected to the Christian movement but he actually acted to arrest and to punish those who were following Christ. In fact it was on his way to Damascus to arrest more people that Jesus appeared to him on the road and asked, “Paul why are you persecuting me?” In that question Paul came to see that he was wrong and that Jesus was the Messiah. He also understood that God was calling him to become a Christian Jew.
So that’s the conversion of Paul—a conversion from being an unbeliever to being a believer; a conversion from being a persecutor to being a disciple. It is in that very conversion that we can find the relevance of Paul’s life to our life. Because one of the clearest things of the life of Paul is that he was willing to change. He was willing to accept a whole new understanding of who Christ was and what God was calling him to. Paul was firmly convinced that Christianity needed to be stamped out and that the followers of Christ needed to be arrested. Yet when Christ appeared to him, Paul understood that he was wrong. He changed what he believed.
Paul’s example asks us to examine what we believe. It reminds us that even though we believe things deeply, we must always be open to change. Just because we believe things deeply does not necessarily mean that we are right. We hold a lot of opinions: opinions about people, opinions about trends in our society, opinions about government, opinions about the economy, and opinions about many factors in our world. We believe some of these things very deeply. The example of Paul asks us are we open to accept new data? Are we willing to look at our convictions again? Are we willing to think again and perhaps ask whether we should change? We might have already formed negative opinions about people. We may be sure about people in our family: an uncle, an in-law, perhaps even a son or daughter. We may be sure about people at work: our employer or a co-worker. We may have already formed negative assessments of trends in our society, about the value of the internet, or the state of the economy. We might have already convinced ourselves that this person will never change, that this situation will never improve, that this problem can never be solved
Paul asks us whether we are so confident that we do not need to think again. Paul did think again. He responded to the new call of Christ, and his life reminds us that change is sometimes necessary and even profound change can lead to deeper life.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think that many of the things we believe are true and we should hold onto them with all of our strength. But only God knows all things perfectly. Since we are not God, there is always room to grow. If Paul had not changed, he would not have become an apostle and the church would be very different. On this feast of the conversion of Paul, then, we celebrate the need and the possibility of ongoing conversion in our lives. Let us follow Paul’s example, holding deeply to what we believe but always open to God’s call to change. Let us listen to that voice which says, “You are going in the wrong direction – turn around and follow me.”
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