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, the gospel, 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 reexpel demons. They will speak entirely new languages. They will be able to handle serpents. They will be able to drink deadly poison without harm, and the sick upon whom they lay their hands will recover. And this is the gospel of the lord.
Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Well, today, we are once again celebrating the conversion, as we say, of Saint Paul. And, well, each year it comes along, and I should have something new to say about it. The main point that that just simply I can't get rid of is the fact that what do we what was he converted from, and what was he converted to?
Now here you had Paul, and we had this is we have plenty of good, hard, factual data about Paul. This is from the book of the Acts. Here's a man who was a pharaoh. He was a Jew. He was a Roman citizen because he came from Tarsus, and Tarsus the people of Tarsus had been made Roman citizens.
He was a Pharisee. Notice that Paul was a Pharisee. So when you talk about Pharisees, remember Paul was one of the that crowd. Keep that in mind. He was not only a Jew, a Roman citizen, he was not only a Pharisee, that means a person who's been highly educated in the law, but he was a fervent Pharisee.
He had dedicated his life totally, there's the point, totally to God, to Yahweh. And whatever conversion took place, that didn't change at all. There was no change there at all, except to make it more vigorous, to make it more inflamed, to bring it to a higher boiling point. I don't care what figure's feet you use, but there was no change there in the sense that he went from being godless to being a godly man. Not not at all.
Not at all. Keep that in mind. What was his conversion? Not from non belief in god to some kind of exuberant belief in god. Not at all.
There was no change there except to accentuate, to deepen, to widen, any words you want to use, his faith and confidence and trust and his total dedication to God Almighty. There were no changes there except changes to increase everything. So then what was he converted from and to? Now he wasn't converted from not knowing Christ to knowing Christ. He knew Christ and was his greatest enemy.
Because he loved God, and because he looked upon Christ as an upstart, a blasphemous upstart who was detracting, who was pulling the people away from God, from the law. And therefore, he hated God. Let's not be hesitate to use the word hate. Because if you love, you have to hate the contradictories of love. So what was he converted from, and what was he converted to?
The conversion was his his conception of Jesus Christ, and that was a total reversal. From looking upon Christ as the enemy of God, as a blaspheming anarchist, he then conceived God after this very peculiar phenomenon that happened to him. He conceived God, I mean, Jesus Christ as the son of God, the Messiah. Now now something something very wonderful, Wunderbar, something something very staggering and startling happened on his on his road to Damascus. What precisely it was, who knows?
But we have a pretty good account of it in in in rough outlines. And that kind of thing is not totally unknown. Remember that religious experiences are commonplace, so let's not make a lot of it. The whole question is how do you tell what's what is authentic and what is not? There's the problem.
Saint Teresa of Avila, this was her problem all through her life. And remember, with Saint Teresa of Avila, who had all kinds of visions and mystical experiences, she never acted on one of them. No matter how strong it was, no matter what command she got from what apparently was Jesus Christ speaking to her. She never acted on it until she had it until she had it confirmed, until she had discussed it, and you might say odd nauseam sometimes. She must have been a nuisance to have around.
But anyway, she never acted on one of those mystical experiences until she had confirmed it with a lot of consultation with what she called educated spiritual men, her advisors, her spiritual directors. So I don't make a great deal out of this, the phenomenon. It's not a terribly There's an article I just read, I think it was the Reader's Digest, about Bookmeister. How he was walking to Lake Michigan to to jump into the lake. He was a confirmed alcoholic, his whole life had gone to pot, and he was on walking towards the lake to commit suicide.
And then something tremendous happened to him. He was a totally changed man. But the point I want to make is that Paul changed. Not from knowing Christ. He knew Christ before and after.
But a whole new revelation of the significance of Christ came to him. And with the very same impetuosity, the same vigor, the same commitment, the same total dedication that he had given to opposing Christ, that same man with all those same attributes now becomes his great champion. Now where's the conversion? What do you mean to this word? It wasn't a conversion like Saint Augustine, or Saint Aloysius, or Saint Francis of Assisi.
Wasn't anything like that at all. So anyway, today we celebrate this man's great feast. And the point I want to make is this. You won't believe it, but there is a point to my well chosen remarks. And that's this.
Saint Augustine talked about the preambles of faith. Something that goes ahead of faith. And don't you ever forget that. We had a memorial I wasn't going to speak about this, but I just can't help. We had a memorial service here yesterday for missus Green, who died in her sleep the other night, and she had a very checkered career.
She started out as a Presbyterian and and gave it up completely and totally rejected it. She married a Jewish gentleman named Green, you're surprised, and had three children. He was didn't practice any religion. He was a good God fearing atheist, if he took any time to be an atheist. Religion just didn't enter into his life.
He was too busy trying to do what he felt he had to do for his family. But she, the Christian, felt that she had to to give those children of his some kind some kind of religious education. So she took them to the synagogue and to the school herself. Well, they didn't once once they got in control of their own lives, they gave that up. I mean, that seems seems to be the way it's going.
And so she was left pretty high and dry, and took me took herself to a psychiatrist. And after a period of time, considerable period of time, he finally told said to look, you don't need me, you need a priest. And then she she got in contact with Unity. Then she came up here and and got in contact with Unity. Then she got in contact with this parish, and she was to be fully received into the church on Holy Thursday.
Well, she's she's she has beaten the gun. She is she just, as we say, jumped the gun, didn't wait for Holy Thursday. Now the point I'm making is, you say here was a change. Can you call her a con where's the conversion here? Think about it.
Now I'm not arguing if you want to use the word conversion fine, but let's get at the reality behind this. Here's a woman no matter what her religious, in the sense of affiliation, whatever it was, all her life she had a conviction about God and about our responsibility to God. And then only towards the end of her life, which became very suddenly the end, did she seem to find her way home. You have the same story with Muggeridge. You'd have the same story with Newman.
Some remember Newman had one heck of a life after he became a Catholic. That is, submitted to Rome as they say. It was miserable in many ways. And somebody said, well, aren't you sorry you ever made a change? He said, not at all.
He says, I'm at home. I'm at home. And so when we think of this conversion of Saint Paul, let's get at the reality of this, and let us see it in our own lives. Let us see in our own lives that it's a matter of a concept of God. You've got to begin with God.
And there you then you are in danger of this anthropomorphic business that is all gone, completely gone. You cannot be guilty of anthropomorphism. When before that babe that we have at Christmas time, lying in a manger, and you bend your knee and you say to that little baby born of a woman named Mary, my lord and my god. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit. Amen.