The conversion of Paul and the sins of act and omission

Our Lenten trek with the saints invoked in the old Confiteor includes “the holy Apostles, Peter and Paul.” Last week we considered Peter; this week, we look at Paul.

Like Peter, Paul had a checkered past. Peter was more of a practical guy and a working-class fellow who made his living with his hands. Paul was more of an intellectual, a learned man who also made a living with his hands, as a tentmaker (Acts 18:3).

Indeed, Paul began as Saul, a star rabbinical pupil of the great Rabbi Gamaliel, expected to surpass his teacher. He was a zealous and devout Jew, learned in Scripture.

And, because he was a Scripture scholar, he was no doubt sure that God had to fit his categories and his expectations. It is why he had no problem making Israel’s early Christians an offer they couldn’t refuse: return to Judaism or die. He was certain he was doing God’s work. It’s only on the road to Damascus that his perspective was suddenly and irreversibly changed.

Among the works of the Polish writer Roman Brandstaetter is a short story about Jonah, called by God to preach conversion to Ninevah. Jonah’s response was to go in the opposite direction— until a “great fish” (Jonah 1:17) got in his way. For Brandstaetter, it’s not that Jonah is simply disobedient. It was that Jonah was a devout Jew who could not conceive that God might use His special, covenantal relationship with Israel as a means to bring all mankind into unity with Him.

That idea did not fit Jonah’s categories of how God would act. It was easier for him to talk himself into believing God’s call was the call of the Evil One, which, if that were the case, would justify heading in the opposite direction. Operating from that mindset, Jonah also would need a change in perspective—that is, to be deposited by a “great fish” on a beach near the road to Ninevah.

Paul, like Peter, lived by certain certainties. But, like Peter, he was also sufficiently open to God’s grace and Word that he would hear and accept it rather than try to force God’s grace and Word into his categories. That’s why, when God intervened in a way even Saul could not deny, the old man died and the Apostle Paul was born.

That’s not to say that such conversion simply wiped away everything that preceded it. Paul insists that he is the least of the apostles, unfit for the title “because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor 15:9). But he’s also humble enough to admit God can write straight even with his crooked lines and, therefore, “by the grace of God I am what I am,” an apostle (1 Cor 15:10).

In the current Confiteor, we acknowledge sinning “in what I have done, and what I have failed to do.” Paul’s own life bears witness to both realities. What he did—persecute God’s Church—was just discussed. What he failed to do—his omissions—are also recorded in Scripture. Chief among them is being a bystander at the murder of St. Stephen.

St. Stephen the deacon, the first martyr, stirred up the fury of the Jerusalem establishment with his eloquent testimony to Jesus. They are driven to stone him and then, like Jesus (Mk 14:62), he makes allusion to the visions of Daniel 7 (vv. 9-14), causing his listeners to deem him a blasphemer. Acts records the murder, laconically noting that the killers used “a young man named Saul” (7:58) as a coat-check boy for their cloaks so their throwing arms would have more freedom. Lest there be any doubt of his complicity, we read that “Saul approved of their killing him” (8:1).

Paul, therefore, teaches us to acknowledge our sins, both those of act and omission. There’s another thing he can profitably tell us sinners. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that God gave him “a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me” lest he become “conceited” (12:7-9)—that is, proud or overly reliant on his own powers. He admits he begged God “three times” to take that “thorn” away, but God refused.

We don’t know what that “thorn” was. Was it a particular temptation? Was it a suffering or handicap that impaired him? Paul does not say. What is important is that God left him with that “thorn in the flesh” because “’my grace is sufficient for you.’”

That “thorn” taught him two important things: that relying on his own capacities will result in failure, but that relying on God’s grace will lead to victory. Man’s powers are not self-sufficient, but with God’s grace, all things are possible (Mt 19:26b). That’s important, because some people delay their conversion, falsely thinking they need to “prove” to God that they have turned from a particular sin by their own prolonged avoidance of it. That’s false thinking: what you need is God’s grace to be converted, and what you need to receive that grace is simply to stop putting obstacles in its way. You must try to pull yourself up by your spiritual bootstraps because you cannot, no matter the effort.

We never need to fall into mortal sin; God gives us the grace we need to avoid it. God never asks us to do what we cannot, nor does He fail to give us what we need to do His will (though we can fail to avail ourselves of those means). That does not mean He gives us the grace to do His will easily—Paul’s “thorn” remained a thorn—but following God’s will is always possible.

So, in asking St. Paul’s intercession, we sinners can learn a lot about acknowledging what we have been as well as how God’s grace can make us totally new in unexpected ways (I Jn 3:2).