The bolt of lightning

Friday, May 05, 2017

I’m sorry I’ve been missing reflections lately; I haven’t been feeling well; nothing serious.

Today at Mass we hear about St. Paul’s conversion, when he was knocked off his horse by a flash of light. (Acts 9:1-20) (I often think of it as a bolt of lightning.)

This story tells us a lot about the nature of God—a God whose purposes are greater than what we can plan for or predict, a God whose mercy extends so far beyond the boundaries our rational minds would want to set. Just take a look at Paul and at what he had done:

Paul was a religious zealot, a Pharisee just like those the Lord had opposed and even condemned during his days of public ministry. Paul was a religious fanatic and was obsessed with persecuting those who had come to faith in Jesus, that is, those who had abandoned the faith the Paul clung so tenaciously to and who dared to think and believe in ways that he felt were unacceptable. We learned the other day that Paul stood by consenting when the Jews stoned St. Stephen to death. We also know that Paul had been going around arresting and even arranging for the deaths of the early Christian believers. We might say that Paul had been doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons.

But yet, God chose him to become one of the great leaders of His Church. God sent light and power and crushing defeat upon him, God rendered him blind so that finally he could begin to see the truth; God arranged for a considerably long time of training, and then used him as one of the greatest preachers the Church has even known. He didn’t make Paul’s live easy; no, he lived a life of tremendous hardship, persecution, violence (against him), shipwreck and poverty.  He was guided by the Spirit, but nothing every came easy to him. Paul had been a man who struggled; his converted life also became a life of great struggle.

Study Paul’s writings. I believe we can see traces of the “old Paul” in many places in his writings, and a trace of the zealot who was too quick to condemn those who did not adhere to what he said or thought. There are also places in his writings where his humanity shone through and where he tended to be manipulative, boasting and acting like a poor parent. Those are strictly my own considerations, and perhaps I will write about them at another time.

There are a couple of lessons we might take away from this story:

--worthiness has nothing to do with God’s action in our lives.

--We struggle because of our sins, but we also will struggle when we are devoting ourselves to doing what is right.

--God’s light and power and grace can knock us off our high horses at times and perhaps has already done that to us more than once.

--God uses everything for the advancement of His Kingdom. Even you. Even me.

God bless you! Have a nice weekend.