Feast of Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle (25 Jan 2019)
Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J., 8-day retreat
Ongoing & Personal
What happens after crucial life-events often is affected by what went before. Conversions are crucial life-events; they challenge us sharply because it is not easy to change what went before: ways of living become set patterns. Conversion-living is possible when we welcome them as divine gifts: God desires us as we are so God may transform us to live as God creates us for our world. I highlight two qualities for us: the ongoing and the personal.
Making retreat has its freshness, and we often long for it. In our honest moments we admit we easily return to our accustomed ways. Yet that does not cancel our authentic intentions nor lessen God loving us: we are challenged. I think of St. Ignatius of Loyola growing aware of motions within him as he recovered from his battle wounds. Growing aware is to be reflective. Becoming reflective began his conversion; Ig-natius noticed he wanted to give his life to God in loving service.
When we’re challenged we need support. Ignatius told his family what he desired and it saddened them. Instead of support he was chal-lenged more. He recalled it this way: His brother led him from room to room and with much love for him pleaded with him not to throw his life away, but to acknowledge the great hopes people had placed in him and to see what he could make of himself.1
His brother did nothing bad: the Loyola wealth and privileges were good things. How that tour of his home challenged Ignatius! I am convinced Ignatius was coming to know he could not make himself valuable without God. He knew what his brother and family could not know: Ignatius knew God was finding and empower-ing him each day.
Ignatius knowing what his brother could not shines light on a second quality of conversion: it is personal. St. Paul’s account of risen Jesus meet-ing him suggests it, too. ‘I am Jesus the Nazorean whom you are persecuting.’ The one Paul sought to destroy, no less! Jesus could not have been more direct; and only Paul hear[d] the voice of the one who spoke to him. After taking in and accepting the gracious, stunning love of risen Jesus, Paul chose to allow the pattern of Jesus’ self-emptying love to be the pattern of his daily existence. Daily: as if Jesus found Paul each day.
I regard all things as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things…I regard them as rubbish, in order to gain Christ & be found in him.2 Paul was emphatic; we translate rubbish the word Paul wrote: excrement. When we are overwhelmed we are emphatic. When love overwhelms us we more deliberately choose our emaphtic words. Being loved empowers us to live whatever comes. I blush that I lose sight that my patron saint kept ever fresh his encounter with Christ Jesus. His personal encounter with Christ Jesus empowered him to make himself what he alone could not. That consoles me: my short-sightedness does not stop me from letting myself be found again and again.
Let yourselves be found by our triune God these days. Continue giving yourselves to God on your retreats so you may enjoy an intimate knowledge of our God. Knowing God intimately shows us ourselves and empowers us to live and love in ways that may surprise us. Our witness to Christ Jesus may not be as memorable as the witness of St. Paul; our witness may not be startling as those baptized by the first apostles. Yet the humblest witness to Christ Jesus that Jesus gives birth in us will affect others in ongoing, deeply personal ways.
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- A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola, 12.
- Philippians 3.8-9a; Thayer’s entry for rubbish.
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Detail, Conversion of St. Paul by Caravaggio by Alvesgaspar CC BY-SA 4.0; Guelph2017-98 © Damian Doyle, used with permission.
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