The conversion of a fanatic

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul

Paul was what we would call today a religious fanatic, a fervent Pharisee who went about imprisoning and murdering those who believed in Jesus. The story of his past and of his conversion is recounted in two places in the Acts of the Apostles: Acts 9:1-22 and Acts 22:3-16.

It is important to realize that in his fanaticism, he fervently believed he was doing the right thing, and that is true of all fanatics of whatever stripe, and it is true today; in fact, there are even fanatical Christians. Consider, for example, those who have murdered abortionists, or who beat their children severely, or who subject homosexual teenagers to cruel and ineffective “conversion therapies.” (Consider also that the current American Vice-President believes this to be the right thing to do.)

One more example: this is true even of you and me: we have an innate ability to convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing, especially when all we have to rely on is our own “light.”

There are three things that I would like to point out concerning St. Paul’s story:

1) God had other plans for Paul than what Paul was planning to do on his way to Damascus and in order to get through to him, He flooded him with light. Sometimes God has plans for us that take us in another direction than we had planned to go, and sometimes He has to knock us off our “high horse” to get through to us as well.

2) Don’t ever think that you have been so sinful or so lost in error that God would have no use for you. Consider Paul and how God used him even though he considered himself “the worst of sinners.”

3) God sometimes even uses our greatest weaknesses for his own purposes. Again, consider Paul: once a fanatic, always a fanatic, and if you read Paul’s letters carefully, you can perhaps detect signs of Paul’s innate fanaticism, but now tempered by God’s grace. Nonetheless, Paul was a driven man, just as much as he was when he was persecuting the Lord’s people. God took that fierce drive of his and channeled it so that Paul became the greatest, and fiercest, preacher of his age.

God bless you!