What Conversion Really Means

We celebrate this week St. Paul’s Conversion, an event that altered history. Paul’s conversion was sudden and dramatic, changing him from a zealous persecutor of Christ into one of His Apostles.

So what exactly happened on the road to Damascus? Here are Pope Benedict XVI’s thoughts, taken from one of his general audience teachings during the Church’s Year of St. Paul:

In reading the accounts told in the Acts of the Apostles, “The average reader may be tempted to linger too long on certain details, such as the light in the sky, falling to the ground, the voice that called him, his new condition of blindness, his healing like scales falling from his eyes and the fast that he made. But all these details refer to the heart of the event: the Risen Christ appears as a brilliant light and speaks to Saul, transforms his thinking and his entire life. The dazzling radiance of the Risen Christ blinds him; thus what was his inner reality is also outwardly apparent, his blindness to the truth, to the light that is Christ. And then his definitive ‘yes’ to Christ in Baptism restores his sight and makes him really see.”

It was the encounter with Jesus that changed St. Paul, the pope said. “Thus St. Paul was not transformed by a thought but by an event, the irresistible presence of the Risen One Whom subsequently he would never be able to doubt, so powerful had been the evidence of the event, of this encounter.”

Jesus “spoke to Paul, called him to the apostolate and made him a true Apostle, a witness of the Resurrection, with the specific task of proclaiming the Gospel to the Gentiles, to the Greco-Roman world.”

“This turning point in his life, this transformation of his whole being was not the fruit of a psychological process, of a maturation or intellectual and moral development. Rather it came from the outside: it was not the fruit of his thought but of his encounter with Jesus Christ. In this sense it was not simply a conversion, a development of his ‘ego,’ but rather a death and a resurrection for Paul himself. One existence died and another, new one was born with the Risen Christ. There is no other way in which to explain this renewal of Paul. . . . In this deeper sense we can and we must speak of conversion. This encounter is a real renewal that changed all his parameters. Now he could say that what had been essential and fundamental for him earlier had become ‘refuse’ for him; it was no longer ‘gain’ but loss, because henceforth the only thing that counted for him was life in Christ.”

God had still been at work in Paul’s former life, equiping him through his experiences to become one of the Church’s greatest missionaries. His conversion, though, became his launching point.

“At this moment he did not lose all that was good and true in his life, in his heritage, but he understood wisdom, truth, the depth of the law and of the prophets in a new way and in a new way made them his own. At the same time, his reasoning was open to pagan wisdom. Being open to Christ with all his heart, he had become capable of an ample dialog with everyone, he had become capable of making himself everything to everyone. Thus he could truly be the Apostle to the Gentiles.

“Turning now to ourselves, let us ask what this means for us. It means that for us too Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ. Of course, He does not show Himself to us in this overwhelming, luminous way, as He did to Paul to make him the Apostle to all peoples. But we too can encounter Christ in reading Sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ’s Heart and feel him touching ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians. And in this way our reason opens, all Christ’s wisdom opens as do all the riches of truth.

“Therefore let us pray the Lord to illumine us, to grant us an encounter with His presence in our world, and thus to grant us a lively faith, an open heart and a great love for all, which is capable of renewing the word.”

Amen.

Inspired by this Year of Faith we will be posting columns like this from Susan Szalewski about exploring and/or deepening our faith. Watch for it on Thursdays.