The Conversion of St. Paul (January 25, 2026)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Today, we commemorate the Conversion of St. Paul. St. Pauls is the author of 2/3 of the New Testament and is the patron saint of missionaries, theologians, evangelists, Gentile Christians, and, perhaps most importantly, our parish. St. Paul has two feast days: today when we commemorate his conversion and June 30th, the day after the Feast of St. Peter the Apostle because the two of them are often celebrated together. We should note that the feast of Paul’s Conversion happens during the Epiphany season; during the season where the theme is the light given to the Gentiles, we commemorate the conversion of the Apostle to the Gentiles. On this feast day and during this season, we should be thankful on two levels: first, we should be thankful of the universality of the Gospel and its spread throughout the world; and second, we should be thankful for our own conversions by which the Gospel has become part of us. Today, we focus on conversion: St. Paul’s and our own; what we experienced, what we are experiencing, and what we will hopefully experience.

Our Lord manifests himself most clearly in the conversion of sinners. St. Paul holds himself up as an example in this regard. He calls himself the “chief of sinners” (1 Tim 1:15) because of his past conduct towards the Church of God. But we know what St. Paul was saved to do: to convert Gentiles to that Church. But what was it he was saved from? He was saved from his own goodness; or rather, he was saved from the lie of self-justification. Paul was disabused from the world’s way of reckoning by finding out he couldn’t be saved by his ethnicity, power, intellect or social standing. In fact, one major argument for the authenticity of Paul’s experience on the Road to Damascus is the fact that he lost his political power, he lost the security of ethnocentrism, he had to venture in out in faith from the fortress of his intellect, he had to leave his sense of belonging to become a social pariah. All those forces still act on us today, but with one major difference: Christendom, as a social construct, that we can have these things and conversion simultaneously. It’s a notion we have to resist.

Conversion isn’t the same thing as belief. It’s not going to Church. Conversion is radical in the literal sense: it goes to the root. Conversion recognizes the either/or at the heart of reality: it’s either God or nothing. Convert comes from the Later vertere which means to turn and con which means altogether; literally to turn about. A person is converted when Christ becomes revealed in a person and, in turn, the person’s whole self—body and soul—is turned toward Christ; it’s when we come to him as little ones. St. Paul had Christ revealed in him so that he became a conduit of Christ to all he encountered; Paul was wholly turned toward Christ so that Christ is all that mattered. Everything Paul did was for Christ. Hopefully, all of us at St. Paul’s have had Christ revealed to us, but not always in us. We still need conversion because most of us haven’t been fully converted; we’re still being held back by a love of money or luxury, deadly sin, or vices. Conversion means leaving the broad way and embracing the narrow way that leads to life. Conversion is embarking on a road of our preference or own making but by submission to God, the Holy Spirit, the Church, and the Sacraments.

Paul’s experience on the road was something he never forgot for his whole life. In fact, we can read St. Paul’s biography as a response and obedience to the Lord who confronted him that day. But the devil hates conversion; he much prefers apathy, he prefers a cultural and nominal Christianity and so if he doesn’t convince us to reject God’s grace, he can push us to forget it. God uses many ways of saving us; every story is different. But we, like Old Testament Israel, are plagued by forgetfulness and, as a result, are prone to wonder. When we forget about what God has done in us, we readily accept the lie that we did it ourselves. And so our best defense against Satan is not only to remember, but to celebrate and be proud of our conversion. Proud not because of what we’ve done, but the opposite. In fact, conversion is a reminder that it’s God’s work and not ours. It humbles us just like it humbled Paul in 1 Timothy 1:12-14, ““And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” Conversion is pure mercy that makes us ask “Where would I be without God’s work in my life?”

If the Devil can’t make us forget, he can try to prevent conversion by fostering a sense of bitterness in our hearts towards others by making us hypercritical of their sins. Isn’t it interesting that we’re often most critical of the sins in others that most remind us of ourselves? But think about Paul: he preached to Gentiles, pagans who were considered unclean by the Jews, who practiced all sorts of sins and reprehensible acts. But Paul understood that the Gospel was for them. Beyond that, the Jewish religious leaders wanted Paul dead because his Gospel threatened their power. But in Romans 9-11, we see Paul burn with desire for even their conversion: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.” The point here isn’t that we should be complacent about the very real horrors of sin, but to recognize that we don’t come from a place of superiority. Jesus tells us to pray for “them”—whoever “they” are to you. St. Paul teaches us to love them in the same way that Jesus loved Paul and all of us enough to die for us.

St. Paul guarded his conversion by remembering God’s power and the call to love other.s He loved sinners, even those who persecuted him, because the Gospel demanded him to see that none of us are really that different. And so remember that we once were lost and now are found; God delivered us and for that we should love him like we love nothing else. From that primal reality, we should love and pray for those who are still lose and not lose patience with them, instead praying that we might increase in love for them. The Anglican preacher John Keble concluded his sermon on this day by saying, “This is being follos of S. Paul, as he was of Christ. God make us all such, that we, with him and all true converts, having the minds of little children, may abide for ever in the kingdom of heaven.”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.