Gulf Pine Catholic

8 Gulf Pine Catholic • January 19, 2024 January 25 is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, when we commemorate a monumental event in the life of the early Christian Church. Occurring in the years immedi- ately following Christ’s death and resurrection, Paul’s con- version happened abruptly, but its effects have remained with us ever since, resounding throughout the centuries and speaking to humanity of the astounding power of God to intervene in our lives. It happened on the Road to Damascus where Paul was on his way to capture Christians and bring them to Jeru- salem for punishment. Just before entering the city to ter- rorize the followers of Christ, Paul was met with a flash of light and fell from his horse. Jesus then spoke to him, saying, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” Paul was blind for three days after that miraculous encounter, until Jesus appeared in a dream to one of the Christians of Damascus telling him to go to Paul. The man went and laid his hands on Paul, who was healed in the name of Jesus. He was baptized, became part of the Chris- tian community, and went on to become the greatest evan- gelist of his time. It’s interesting to note that St. Stephen’s martyrdom laid the groundwork for Paul’s conversion because some- thing happened at that event to plant a seed in Paul’s heart, a seed just wait- ing to grow once he discovered Christ. Paul was present at the stoning of Saint Stephen, when the great apostle gave witness to the depths of his faith by forgiving his attackers even as they put him to death. As a figure in au- thority, Paul may have ordered the ex- ecution or was overseeing it in some manner, and one can only imagine the lingering effect Stephen’s act of for- giveness would have had on Paul and others involved. Looking at these key points in time bracketing the con- version of St. Paul -- from the seed of forgiveness planted in his heart at St. Stephen’s stoning, and culminating with the healing intervention of a follower of Christ -- we see a dynamic that has played out repeatedly ever since the Holy Spirit was given to the Church after the Resurrection. This dynamic that comes to life so vividly in the story of Paul’s conversion is rooted in the reality that God desires to work through each one of us. This is why Christ came into the world, to enter the struggle of humanity in the most inti- mate and sacrificial way. In working through us, Christ calls us to witness to each other, like St. Stephen’s witness of forgiveness. And He calls us to go to each other on healing missions in the way His follower from Damascus went to Paul. These wit- nesses were joined to the miraculous intervention of Christ on the Road to Damascus to help inspire Paul to spend the rest of his life providing witness to others through preach- ing so exquisite, it is handed down to us as part of Sacred Scripture itself. Paul witnessed to us in the way he lived after his con- version and right up to the way he died, following in the footsteps of Saint Stephen as a holy martyr of the Church, giving up his life to join with the other martyrs and Christ Himself in becoming the seed that produces good and lasting fruits. May St. Paul intercede for us and inspire us daily to take up our cross and follow Christ. Fr. Ed Dougherty, M.M., serves on The Christo- phers’Board of Directors. For a free copy of the Chris- topher News Note, GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP, write: The Christophers, 5 Hanover Square, New York, NY 10004; or e-mail: mail@christophers.org . The seed planted in St. Paul’s heart Light One Candle Fr. Dougherty My November column told the story of my visitors from the States; how, when encountering the beauty and naturalness of our countryside, they re- marked: “How can anyone not believe in God on seeing nature at its finest. Following that column, I received an email from Ervin in Biloxi. He wrote: The other side of the coin is that people look at the terrible suffering that mil- lions of innocent creatures, small chil- dren, all animals must endure appar- ently without purpose, every minute of every day. Not to speak of the tortures that whole populations, Jews, Arabs presently and only decades ago endured. How does one square this with an ever loving God? You will say that it is another mystery, as the Trinity, what soul is, what God is, etc., etc. How did sin emerge as a concept, when formalized religions of civilizations are only a few thousand years, not millions as mankind, old are? I am sure that you gave it some thought and reconciled it with a Loving God....I enjoy reading your column. God bless you also with good health and optimism. Yours truly.” Ervin posed the other side of the coin: When you see all the evil in the world, how do you reconcile that will a loving God? Great minds have wrestled with that contradiction since the beginning of time and still haven’t come up with a satisfy- ing answer. Even poor Job in the Old Testament wrestled with it when life was falling apart all around him -- his livelihood and family dying. Paul had his own inner demons to deal with when he said “In my inmost self I dearly love God’s law, but I see that acting on my body there is a different law which battles against the law in my mind. So, I am brought to be a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body. Scrip- ture scholars and theologians wrestled with the contradiction as well, but the contradiction still remains. Even Thomas Aquinas, who wrote volumes of Summa, still had to admit at the end of his life, that he was still as ignorant as ever of understanding the mystery of God. He concluded finally that “good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist with- out good…” Sometimes, it seems logical for us to compare. We compare light and darkness, sea and sky, night and day, mercy and judgment. By comparing, it gives us a perspective, a point of reference. Often, we are inclined to compare good and evil as another frame of reference to try and understand their concepts in a context but St. Thomas reminds us that goodness can exist without the presence of evil; that God is goodness personified. C.S. Lewis, in his book, “The Problem with Pain,” wrestled with the contradiction of good and evil, when he wrote, “The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word “love”, and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. “Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest “well pleased.” We all remember the old saying that says “There is some bad in the best of us and some good in the worst of us.” We are a contradiction. We are capable of great things and, at the same time, capable of great destruction and evil. Our same human coin is stamped with the two contradictory sides. Alexander Solzhenitsyn having experienced evil in Russia, in his book, “The Gulag Archipelago” said that “if only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously commit- ting evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?! Sometimes, I hear parents ask the question when a child’s coin is flipped to the evil side; when the child goes down a path that the parents hoped would never happen to their child. The parents ask: “Where did we go wrong? We tried to do right for them; to lead them down the right path. Where did we fail?” Growing up, if misfortune, pain, suffering or crosses visited a neighbour, other neighbours, reflecting on their own good fortune, would bless the good Lord for protecting them- selves from their neighbour’s misfortune by saying “there go I but for the grace of God.” In other words, the mantle of God’s protection wrapped around them and protected them from any such calamity. Maybe, when the Lord showers us with blessings and gifts beyond compare, we would also say, “There go I because of the grace of God.” I suppose when it is our time to meet the good Lord, the dichotomies and incongruities of this life as well as the many complexities of life’s mysteries; will pale in comparison to the Goodness gifted to us. Father Michael Tracey is retired and lives in Ireland. He can be contacted by email at mtracey1@bellsouth.net . His website is www.michaeltracey.net The big “Why?” Across the Pond Father Tracey