The Conversion of St. Paul is usually celebrated on Jan. 25, but this year it is only an optional celebration because it lands on a Sunday, the day each week the church remembers the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
That risen Savior appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus where Paul was journeying to arrest Christian Jews and bring them back to Jerusalem for trial as heretics. Jesus, using his Jewish name, asked him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"
His letters to the churches show that the Apostle Paul never forgot the message.
The recollection of that vision of the risen Lord is embedded in Paul's certainty about the resurrection not only of Jesus but of believers as well. Paul describes the unity of Christians with Christ as so complete that Christ became sin so that they can be the holiness of God. They are members, after all, of one body of which Christ is the head. There is but one Spirit shared between Christ and them, and among them as one living body with him. While Paul testifies to his own unworthiness to be an apostle, he testifies the Lord personally commissioned him and gave him the Gospel to preach.
The letters of Paul predate the writing of the four Gospel accounts in the New Testament. Paul is the first to record that at the last supper the Lord took bread and wine and gave himself to his disciples. So real is his presence among them that the way they treat each other, they treat him whose nourishment makes them one with his Father.
Paul has a unique way of laying out the faith of the church and drawing from that teaching the way the members are to act in order to live what they believe. He even goes so far to say that if a Christian gives his flesh over to sin, as with a prostitute, he is engaging Christ with whom he is one in the same act. Paul has a unique way of making things like Christ's presence in the Eucharist as real as our daily lives and actions.
Little wonder Pope Benedict XVI declared the year June 2007 to June 2008 to be the year of the Apostle Paul. Since his election, the pope has emphasized in every way the reality of our faith and called for us to practice it in the real situations of daily life.
Beginning Feb. 23 and continuing through the five Mondays of March, I will offer classes on the letters of St. Paul.
If you would like to hear more about the letters of St. Paul and the very real Christian faith and life he taught, please contact Chris Malmevik at the Office for Catholic Education, (217) 698-8500, ext. 136. The classes will be held from 6:30 until 8:30 each Monday evening at St. Frances Cabrini Church, 1020 N. Milton, Springfield, 62702.
There will be no required text except a Bible, the New American Bible translation is preferred.
Father Richard Chiola is a certified counselor, pastor of St. Cabrini Parish in Springfield and diocesan director for the ongoing formation of clergy.