I could not see for the glory of that light
He was blinded into sight, we might say. Conversion is the paradox of radical transformation. The Conversion of Paul is a striking example of that kind of paradox. He who persecuted “this Way unto death,” meaning the followers of Jesus who are not yet called Christians, becomes himself a follower and even more the outstanding “apostle to the gentiles”. With Paul’s ‘conversion’, Christianity will become Christianity, we might say, and goes global. In that sense, it complements wonderfully the Epiphany season. Something is made known and what is manifest changes us. And sometimes in dramatic ways.
Paul, his name itself is a consequence of his ‘conversion’, tells us his story three times in The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, a book which might equally be called the Book of the Acts of Paul. He was Saul of Tarsus, a learned Jew, “born” as he says “in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city”, Jerusalem, “at the feet of Gamaliel”, a learned rabbi, “and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers,” a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He is laying out his credentials before the Jews on the very steps of the Temple in Jerusalem. They have sought to kill him because of what he is saying about Jesus as the Messiah. The ensuing riot and commotion has resulted in the Roman legion intervening to keep the peace.
But before being taken away by the Roman soldiers, Paul speaks to the tribune, the commanding officer, Claudius Lysius. We actually learn his name. To the surprise of the tribune, Paul addresses him in Greek. The tribune, who is apparently Latin speaking but knows Greek, is surprised because he had thought that Paul was an Egyptian and indeed one of the Sicari, a group of Jewish zealots opposed to the Roman occupation and dominance of the Jewish people. Sicari refers to the daggers which they would use to assassinate both Roman soldiers and Jewish collaborators with the Roman authorities. It is the only time the word is used in the New Testament, an hapax legomenon.
Paul asks to be allowed to speak to the Jewish people. He speaks to them in Hebrew. The entire scene shows us something of the interplay of cultures and languages that belongs to the emergence of Christianity. What is his story? It is his famous account of his ‘conversion’ on the road to Damascus. It becomes iconic; ‘a road to Damascus experience’ signals the idea of a radical change of direction in thought and character.
Conversion can be a dramatic turn about or it can be something which is more gradual, a constant process of education. “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of you mind,” Paul will say in his Epistle to the Romans. It is an Epiphany theme; even more, it expresses the idea of our constant metanoia, the constant turning of our minds to Christ, to repentance and to the deepening of our understanding about the mysteries of God in Christ. It is not really just about a one-off event, even with Paul. His ‘conversion’ comes about as the result of an intellectual struggle about the nature of the Messiah.
His ‘conversion’ is the break through moment of realization that the sufferings of Christ actually belong to the glory of the Messiah. He comes to this through his opposition to the followers of the Way. He had thought that suffering and glory were necessarily opposed. What changes in him is his understanding about God. It marks the beginning of a process of theological thinking about how God’s will and purpose for our humanity is realized through the sufferings of Christ who is like us in all respects except sin and yet becomes sin for us. It will contribute to the teaching about the Christ as God and Man and about human redemption through Christ’s sacrifice. It is an insight into how God and only God brings good out of evil, out of our evil. It brings to a certain concretion the idea of redemptive suffering. Christ is the suffering servant who brings to fulfillment the real vocation of Israel.
Saul was part of the Christmas mysteries as the persecutor. He oversaw the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr. Now, as Paul, he is the persecuted. He is attempting to explain to his fellow Jews his insight and understanding about Jesus. That becomes the setting for his telling us about his ‘conversion’ on the road to Damascus. A personal experience, to be sure, but one which is about a break through of the understanding that Christ is Lord whose sufferings are our redemption. It means a new way of reading the Jewish Scriptures. God seeks our good even when we are his enemies.
Paul comes to this knowledge. It changes him. He is blinded into sight, into an understanding of the mystery of God in Christ.
That he is blinded into sight suggests that he now knows that he didn’t know before. He thought he knew only to discover that he didn’t. Now he understands and so receives his sight. He is changed by what he has come to understand. It is a kind of wonder, a great light, above the brightness of the sun, as he says elsewhere, and the voice of Christ speaking directly to him. Christ’s question convicts him of persecuting him. “Saul, Saul, Why persecutest thou me?” It signals a moment of self-realization that what we think we know can lead us to oppose what is true and good. His conversion is about the greater goodness of God breaking into our minds and souls.
I could not see for the glory of that light
Fr. David Curry
Eve of the Conversion of St. Paul
January 24th, 2019