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I would like to look more closely at the Damascus event, just as Paul did later in some of his letters.
I confess a hesitation to delve into the mystery of God in another person, even though Paul is a representative figure for all of Christianity. I also freely confess an inability to fully capture the meaning of the texts. May the Lord grant me mercy and help me understand some part of the indescribable light that enveloped Paul and transformed the life of this apostle.
To understand the richness of the divine action in Paul, to understand what he said about his experience that millions of people refer to, we need to reflect on three descriptions of his conversion that are found in the Acts of the Apostles: chapter 9 (in a third person account) and chapters 22 and 26 (in autobiographical form).
The description in chapter 26 has the greatest number of autobiographical details, and it is also the most popular and complete account. This is the last speech Paul made: his defense before Agrippa in Caesarea. It can serve as the departure point to clarify what questions we should ask Paul and to hear the answers he gives in passages from the Acts of the Apostles and some of his letters.
The remains of Agrippa’s imperial palace have recently been discovered. It is precisely in that spot, near the sea, where the waves break against the ruins of Roman buildings today, that Paul said this about himself:
I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things [he had a strong sense of duty] in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem; I not only shut up many of the saints in prison, by authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. [The case he refers to evidently concerns Stephen and the approval he gave to Stephen’s death, even if he himself did not throw any stones.] And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme; and in raging fury against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities. (Acts 26:9-11)
At this point, some historical problems need to be addressed. It does not seem that the Sanhedrin at that time had any power outside the synagogues of Palestine, and the synagogues themselves had limited powers—certainly not the power to put people to death. The very killing of Stephen is probably an action they decided upon on their own as a result of popular uprising, and it was outside of the law. Synagogues could interrogate, scourge, and impose different kinds of penalties; this is the milieu in which Paul was initially operating. Historians, therefore, are dubious about the phrase “foreign cities.” Perhaps Paul had procured for himself some letters of recommendation and, with a zeal that surpassed that of almost anybody else, went to those cities to convince them to persecute Christians. He was a man gifted with great creativity when he was pursuing what seemed right to him.
Thus I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining round me and those who journeyed with me. (Acts 26:12-13)
The phrase we need to pay attention to is “a light from heaven.” Paul meditated a great deal on that light and returned to it in writing to the Corinthians: “For it is … God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
The God who created all light manifested himself with an even greater light: Paul links all of God’s great creative actions in the Old Testament with what has happened in him—a profound burst of light whose source is the glory of Christ himself, in the light of which all else pales.
And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.” And I said, “Who are you, Lord?” And the Lord said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand upon your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and bear witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles—to whom I send you to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” (Acts 26:14-18)
Adding this text to the others, we can ask Paul a few questions:
~ What place did the Lord make you leave in order to bring you to Damascus, and what was your situation when the Word of God came to you?
~ In what direction did this foundational event of your life take you?
~ How did this transition occur, i.e., your passing over from death to life, from darkness to light, from not knowing God to knowing God?
What Was Paul’s Situation When the Word Came to Him?
The answer is found in an autobiographical text in the Letter to the Philippians. Paul affirms here that the Word of God took hold of him at a time when he possessed fundamental goods that were precious to him and had been acquired, in part, at a steep price: “I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also” (Philippians 3:4a). He is referring to the things that belong to him because of his own nature, his history, and his activities: “If any other man thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more” (3:4b). These are the elements Paul lists, which belong to his distinguished history:
—Circumcised on the eighth day (3:5): I was not like the pagans, disdainfully called the “uncircumcised” in the sense of being cursed, abandoned—those for whom God seems not to have any concern;
—Of the people of Israel (3:5): I came from the elect people, the light of the nations;
—Of the tribe of Benjamin (3:5): I knew my heritage, my ancestors, the links that connected me to the son of Jacob;
—A Hebrew born of Hebrews (3:5): I had a rich heritage, that is, father, mother, grandparents, all from this illustrious family line;
—As to the law a Pharisee (3:5): I was a strictly observant Hebrew who knew the law completely and carried it out with the most absolute moral rigor as I lived out the profound spiritual tensions of Judaism. “Pharisee” was a glorious name that emphasized commitment to a life lived under the law with a great inner sense of duty;
—As to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless (3:6): This latter phrase is the same praise that is given to Joseph, the righteous man. The parents of John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth, are also described this way: they were both righteous (Luke 1:6). Paul applies to himself the highest praise that can be given from the biblical point of view;
—Blameless: I could have asked, “Who among you can convict me of sin?”
—There was nothing in me that could be faulted from the perspective of the law: We know how minute the commandments and the ceremonial statutes were and how complicated the rituals were. Even today a Jewish meal is very complicated, with many rules about foods, the combinations of foods to avoid, and foods whose origins need to be certified. This kind of focus calls for intense spiritual effort.
Paul finds himself, then, possessing traditions, personal commitment, zeal, and righteousness. These great goods are immensely precious to him, and he lists them with deep emotion. One needs to be acquainted with the Jews to understand the intensity with which, even today, they declare themselves Jews and confess their family roots and their tradition. It is something that is second nature to them, so much so that it cannot be renounced.
The perfect example is Simone Weil. She intuited in the most profound manner the mysteries of baptism, Eucharist, and prayer. She wrote pages that are perhaps among the most beautiful on Christian life, on work, on contemplation, but she was never baptized, because it seemed impossible to her to renounce her Jewish identity. Despite profoundly intuiting the beauty of Christian truth and longing to nourish herself with the Eucharist—which she genuinely recognized as the culmination of history and of creation—in the end, she was blocked by the richness of what she felt she possessed and by the need for solidarity with her tormented people.
Paul uses an expression that refers to Jesus in the Letter to the Philippians, but certainly in this context, it could have an autobiographical flavor: “Christ Jesus, … though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Philippians 2:5-6). The Greek text seems to mean, “Jesus did not consider it as a prize,” that is, as an avid possession to greedily keep for himself. Paul was relating to his heritage in the opposite way; it was a jealously guarded treasure that could not be surrendered to anyone. Having this possession led to a great concern to defend it, a great zeal to promote it, and great violence against those who might threaten it.
This explains Paul’s intolerance of Christians and his need to exterminate them because he understood, rightly so, that they were challenging precisely the root of that treasure.
We can now understand his self-accusations that are later reported in the First Letter to Timothy: “I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him [Christ]” (1:13). He was not a blasphemer in the sense that he was turning away from God, but in the sense that, without knowing it—and his whole conversion, the drama that he lived, lies in this—he was indeed turning away from Christ, the Son of God, in defending his precious treasure. In light of this, we can understand why he described his life as lived in sin because, in reality—and he will be aware of it more and more—his attitude toward God was profoundly wrong. He did not consider God to be God, the author and originator of every good. The center of everything for him was what belonged to him—his own truth, the treasures that had been entrusted to him. This was an approach that was externally blameless, but internally it was based on extreme possessiveness, to such a degree that it struck at the root of his relationship with God, the Father and Creator.
This is the distortion that he was living without knowing it; out of it would arise his new understanding of the gospel, of grace, of mercy, of the divine initiative, and of God’s action. He was not living the gospel of grace but rather the law of self-justification, which made him forget that he was only a human being, blessed by God, not because he was anything in himself, but because God loved him.
Paul’s story is the difficult story of a person who is profoundly religious, but whose religious approach threatens to lead him to a radical distortion of the image of God.
This is the place from which Paul and his violent ideology come. Ideological violence, the fruit of fanaticism and of the inability to understand others unless they are submitted to the same ideals, has not disappeared in our times. People are still seeking to save themselves, are still seeking a righteousness and a self-justification that leads to every kind of aberration because of a “treasure” that leads them to believe they are the owners, and not the servants, of the truth.
Paul’s situation is instructive with regard to some of the most profound perversions; Jesus confronts that in the gospel when he says, “[Sinners] go into the kingdom of God before you” (see Matthew 21:31). This means that those who commit sin when, for instance, they get drunk or let themselves be overcome by sensuality, do commit sin, certainly, but they are always conscious of doing wrong. They need understanding, help, and mercy to overcome their failings and to confess that they are weak. Paul, instead, would never confess to failings or weakness. This is the very sin that Jesus connects to the Pharisees: the fundamental perversion of human beings seeking to save themselves and, believing themselves to have reached the pinnacle of perfection, of engaging in the worst kinds of violence.
In What Direction Was Paul Led?
Our second question for St. Paul is, “In what direction did the Lord take you?” Paul clarifies that direction for us in his letters to the Philippians and Galatians. First of all, the Lord led him to a total detachment from what had formerly seemed most important to him:
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:7-8)
This new direction leads him to realize that all his former goods count for nothing compared to Christ. It is not that they count for nothing in themselves, but in comparison with Christ they have no value.
It led him to a completely new vision of things. It led not to an immediate moral change but to an illumination: he speaks of revelation, because seeing from a new point of view—that of Christ—everything now appears different to him. He judges his life in such a new way that what best expresses his inner response to what Jesus tells him on the way to Damascus is this: “I have been wrong about everything. I believed some things to be valid that were not, which led me to behave in a violent and, in the end, unjust manner. Glorying in my own righteousness, I became an executioner of the innocent.”
When Jesus asks Paul, “Why do you persecute me?” he suddenly understands that he has miserably confused the truth about things. Paul’s terrible shock, not through logic but through a direct en-counter with the truth, is understandable. He knows he has to redo and rethink everything from top to bottom. Matthew 13 describes similar situations: a merchant who found the pearl of great price realizes that everything else is worthless; the man who found a treasure hidden in a field realizes that nothing else has value now.
What happened to Paul was such a revelation of who Jesus is that it changed his mind and his attitude about who he himself was and what he was doing. It was a revelation that turned his inner orientation upside down.
The second way he describes this “new direction” is found especially in a chapter from the Letter to the Galatians: God “was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles” (1:16;). This is the mission that was entrusted to Paul. It is shocking for Paul that these two things occur at the same time: the very moment Jesus makes him understand that he has been wrong about everything, he tells him, “I entrust everything to you; I send you.”
The God of the gospel and of mercy, who in an instant makes me understand that I have been wrong about everything about him because I have put myself in his place, demonstrates his mercy toward me by forgiving me. Then he places his confidence in me by calling me into his service and entrusting his own Word to me.
That instant summarizes for Paul everything that he was mistaken about concerning God. Darkness becomes light; the violent man becomes merciful.
How Did Paul’s Transition Occur?
But before speaking of conversion, we need to understand what was revealed and why Paul speaks of revelation.
Everything was given to him. His change was not due to his strength, meditation, spiritual exercises, long prayers, or fasting. Everything was given to him so that he could be for all peoples a sign of the merciful God, whose initiative always precedes our seeking.
It would be good to look again at Galatians 1:15-16, where Paul uses Old Testament language to describe what happened to him: “He who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me.” The protagonist of the conversion is not Paul, it is God. All the action is on God’s part; he is the author of conversion.
Just as in creation, when “God said … ” and it came to be (see Genesis 1), so too it is God’s initiative in conversion, far beyond any merit or desire or thought of our own.
God calls us and is pleased to manifest his Son to us. This is the first aspect of “how” the transition occurred: through grace, as a gift, because it pleased God.
Everything was given to him through knowing Jesus. We have already seen that Paul describes his conversion in terms of an encounter (1 Corinthians 15:8). Christ is the revelation of God’s merciful initiative toward me. Christ is the encounter between Paul and God.
Questions to Ask Ourselves
~ What about my experience is similar, different, or analogous to Paul’s experience?
~ How can I expect and receive the action or grace of God that makes me who I am?
~How and in what way is Jesus (who for Paul is the revelation of divine mercy) the fundamental reference point for me to understand who I am, what I am, where I came from, and to what I am called?
~ What are the “treasures” that block me from freely responding to the divine initiative toward me?
We need to ask these questions in a spirit of love. If we ask them in a guarded or self-justifying spirit, we will answer them in haste, and we will not succeed in seeing our lives in depth under the gaze of God. But if we ask ourselves in a spirit of love and mercy, we will discover what in us is the work of God as well as what in us is like Paul’s resistance to God’s work.
Let us conclude with 1 Timothy 1:15: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I am the foremost of sinners.”
The fundamental sin of human beings—the root of all sin—is the failure to acknowledge God as God, not recognizing his gift as the fruit of his love. It is the satanic attitude of opposition to God. Paul was refusing God’s goodness to him under the banner of possessing good things.
All of us have that inability to acknowledge God as God.
And I am the foremost of sinners; but I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience for an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. (1 Timothy 1:15-17)
God alone—the only One worthy of honor and glory for what he has done and is doing in us—can cause us to live with this praise of him in our hearts.
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