A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Jesus appeared to the 11 and said to them, go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to all creation. The man who believes in it and accepts baptism will be saved. The man who refuses to believe in it will be condemned. Signs like these will accompany those who have professed their faith.
They will use my name to expel demons. They will speak entirely new languages. They will be able to handle serpents. They will be able to drink deadly poison without any harm, and the sick upon whom they lay their hands will recover. And this is the gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Today is the feast of the conversion of Saint Paul. In other words, the church has made a feast, a very special occasion of this event, this incident in the life of Saint Paul, which we call his conversion. Three accounts of it are given, all of them in the book of the acts of apostles. And some have said that this the abruptness and the complete and almost instantaneous reversal of this man's convictions, this whole complete reversal of his life, you might say, that is it is unmatched in history as far as we know it.
That may well be. You know the story very well. Paul apparently came to Jerusalem quite soon after our lord's death at the age of about 34 or 35. We know that he was we know this because it's stated so, that he was a student of Gamaliel in Jerusalem and was a rigid Pharisee, not just an ordinary easygoing Pharisee, but a rigid one. In other words, he was all gung ho on being a first rate pharisee.
Now that word is with us has an awful lot of opprobrium, but I've tried from time to time to try to clear that up. Just remember that pharisee who came in the church and told god how good he was. Well, he was a pretty good man, believe me. Anyway, he comes to Jerusalem and then becomes a student of Gamaliel, and we find him quite soon after our Lord's death taking part, participating in the stoning of the first martyr Stephen. We're these are not these are the facts of the of the of his biography.
We know these for sure. And then he gets a special commission from the council in Jerusalem, the Jewish council in Jerusalem, to go to Damascus. Now that's about at least 300 miles north of Jerusalem, and this is quite soon after our lord's death. And that tells you something, that there were enough people, Jews, up in Damascus following the new way. They weren't called Christians.
They were they were Jews following the new way, which, of course, was the way that Christ had initiated. But here they are all the way up in Damascus. He's down here in Jerusalem, and he gets a very special commission to go up there and to arrest because the Jews had this power under Roman law, had the power to arrest the Jews who were involved in this new way to bring them back to Jerusalem for trial. He was really an ambitious, a very dedicated, a very self sacrificing pharisee, a man who was extremely jealous of the worship and the law of god as he saw it. And so on route to Damascus, something very, very special happens.
But one thing about that isn't the physical thing about his going blind and that kind and becoming ill and then going to Ananias. But the thing that is to remember is above all is this, that he was absolutely convinced he saw the risen Christ. And he emphasizes this in in more than one instance in his epistles, that he was just as much an apostle as any of the others were. They saw Christ before the resurrection. He saw Christ after the resurrection.
This is absolutely the core of of of Paul's faith, his conviction, his action, the the mission he got of carrying the good news to the world. It all goes back to this experience that he had of seeing the risen Christ. Notice I used the word experience, and I'm not the I'm not very gung ho on the religious experiences, but he certainly something very peculiar happened to him. But whatever it was, he was absolutely convinced that he saw and talked with the risen Christ. That changed his whole life.
And as I say, some of our most contemporary writers make the statement that this complete reversal that was so instantaneous and complete that it is unique in history. Well, might it may well be. I don't know. But whether it was as instantaneous as they say depends on how you look at it. Of course it was instantaneous, and of course it was complete.
No question. But the thing is there were antecedents. Now this is not the story of Newman. This is not the story of a Clive Staple Lewis recovering his faith. This is absolutely something that happened instantaneously and that he saw and talked with the risen Christ and got messages from him.
Now my point is I don't think it was as as instantaneous as that. I here's a man. Why did he come down to Jerusalem? He's all the way up there in Damascus. Now and he was apparently, he came from a pretty good family.
He was illiterate. He was an educated Jew. How much of Greek culture and Greek learning he knew? It's very doubtful that he that he was an educated man in that sense of the word, but he had picked up a lot. Why does he come down from Damascus to sit at the foot of Gamaliel in Jerusalem?
Why did he do that? I don't know why he did it, but he did it. That's for sure. And he did it at the age of about 34 or something. Here's a man at the peak of his manhood.
His whole future is ahead of him. He leaves his home and everything up in Damascus and comes down to Jerusalem to become a student of Gamaliel. Now this isn't fiction. This is fact. We know this for sure.
It says it. Now why did he do that? To make money? The rabbis took no money for their teaching. The point is that before this terrible, terrible, before this awe inspiring event on the road to Damascus happened to Paul, he was a solid, god fearing man.
He was a man who had given his life, as far as I can see it, to god who had no other ambition than to to preserve the religion of god as he saw it, and he was giving his total self to it. Now what happens, as I've said on other occasions, that doesn't change. There's no reversal there. He doesn't change his loyalty to god. He doesn't change his dedication to God.
He doesn't change one iota bit his generosity, his giving of self to God. He none of those things, not a single one of them is changed by this terrific event on the road to Damascus and the subsequent that Paul lived. So whether it was as abrupt as they say now it was abrupt, of course, if you compare it with a man like Newman or Lewis or even Dorothy Day. You know, we've had a lot of these things. People coming over from communism in our time, and but my point is that these changes would seem so abrupt are not so abrupt.
It's something that Augustine made a great deal of, these antecedents of faith. That here's a man like Paul who's giving his whole life to God, and he keeps giving that life to God. The difference is the way is different. The way is different. He changes from the old to the new way.
I'm not minimizing this change, mind you, not in the least. What I'm saying is that the the basic perception of that man of god and of and of and the dedication and devotion and sacrifice that that you have to give to god, that didn't change one iota pin. It may have become more fervent, I don't know. But the point is, if you look at the what we know of his life, he was giving his all, he was giving his entire self, he was giving his future and his past and his present to what he saw was the preserving of the law of god and the true religion. And then suddenly, this terrific thing, whatever it was, absolutely switched switched what?
What did it switch? He already knew Jesus Christ, but he was fighting him. Someone said the next best thing to have in a loyal friend is a noble foe. Just picked up that that out of reading the life of hard in the wolves. That's quite a statement, but it's true.
He knew Jesus Christ, but he was fighting him. He was fighting the new way. Then then what happens? I don't know what happened, but I know the consequences of it that that something that he had he had some kind of an experience of seeing the risen lord and savior Jesus Christ. And that was all he needed.
And he goes right back to Jerusalem and from being the the persecutor of the Jews following the new way, he becomes their champions and carried the good news of Jesus Christ to the Gentile world. In other words, as I see it, that journey that Paul started from Jerusalem to Damascus to persecute the Jews of the new way simply became a journey around the practically the whole northern rim of the Mediterranean Sea to spread the good news that there was a new way and that that new way rested upon the risen lord Jesus Christ, the messiah. In the name of the father, son, and the spirit. Amen.