Bernard Malamud, the author of The Natural, a sub-optimal novel converted into a terrific baseball movie, wrote: “Experience makes good people better. We have two lives … the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering brings us toward happiness.” Similarly, Oscar Wilde opined: “The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.”
On January 25 we celebrate the feast of the Conversion of St Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. Some time between AD 33 and AD 36, Saul (soon to be renamed Paul), rabid persecutor of Christians, was on his famous road to Damascus. As Acts 9 recounts, there was a flash of light from heaven, he fell to the ground (there is no mention of a horse), and a dialogue ensued:
Voice: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”
Paul: “Who art thou, Lord?”
Voice: “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the goad.”
Paul (trembling): “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
That’s the question we must ask.
Speaking of the road to Damascus, a byword for life-changing moments, many of us have blinding moments of realisation about our sinful distance from God. We have flashes of intuition about God’s closeness and love. We have sudden grace-filled encounters with God’s will and plan, which can be frightening, disorienting, even painful slaps. God often uses unpleasant means to get our attention.
St Ambrose, Father of the Church, said: “Although Paul was struck and taken up and was terrified because blindness had befallen him, still he began to come near when he said, ‘Lord, what will you have me do?’ For that reason he is called the youngest by Christ, so that he who was called to grace could be excused from the guilt of his hazardous years. Yes, Christ saw him when the light shone around him; because young men are recalled from sin more by fear than by reason, Christ applied the goad and mercifully admonished him not to kick against it .”
In one of the last songs he wrote, Johnny Cash (not a Father of the Church) echoed: “The whirlwind is in the thorn tree. It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”
Stop kicking. Fall down. Examine your conscience. Get up, and … go to Confession!
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