The first reading today is from the Acts of the Apostles. It is usually called the conversion of St. Paul. Paul himself, however, describes his Damascus’ experience not as a conversion but as a call, a call to evangelize:
“But when God, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles…” (Galatians 1:15-16).
Paul did undergo a radical change in the way that he viewed the church and Jesus. In this sense we can also label his experience as a conversion. Paul had previously been a fervent persecutor of the church as he himself acknowledges:
For you heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it, and progressed in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my race, since I was even more a zealot for my ancestral traditions. (Galatians 1:13-14).
Paul describes himself before his call as a pious and righteous Jew who was zealous for the ancestral traditions. He was a Pharisee, a member of a Jewish lay reform movement within Judaism that was zealous to know and do God’s will. Paul was not self-righteous, nor legalist, nor a hypocrite. Some Pharisees were but most were not. Zealous religious people, be they Jewish or Christian, can at time misplace their zeal and be harsh and condemnatory. They can also become self-righteous and hypocritical when they are quick to see the splinter in their neighbor’s eye but not the blank in their own eye (Matthew 7:3). Paul, most Pharisees and most Christians are not this way.
Paul’s conversion required him to change his worldview. He had to accept a crucified Messiah as the true revelation of God. Paul sums up his own experience of this change as a zealous Jew:
“For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:22-24).
Like Paul, you and I are called to preach and live the Gospel. This call also means we need to undergo a conversion to be “scandalized” by the “foolishness” of a crucified messiah.