The Conversion of St. Paul

The Conversion of St. Paul is one of the decisive turning points in Christian history, and it can be told with the brevity of something already too well known to need ornament. Saul appears first as persecutor: formed in the law, zealous for ancestral religion, consenting to Stephen's death, and on the road to Damascus with authority to hunt down believers. Then the whole line turns.

Light from heaven throws him down, the voice of Christ addresses him by name, blindness drives him inward, Ananias restores his sight, baptism seals the change, and the man who set out to wound the Church begins the life that will make him her great Apostle to the Gentiles. The feast is not only about what happened once on a road. It is about the mercy of God strong enough to turn an enemy into a herald, a destroyer into a builder, and zeal without Christ into zeal wholly possessed by Him.