Reflection for Wednesday, January 25, 2012: Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.
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Authors
Reed-Bouley, Ken
Issue Date
2012-01-25
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Essay
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en_US
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Abstract
So how are those New Year’s Resolutions coming? What’s that? You don’t eat healthier, weigh less, exercise more, and rise earlier to pray (or some variation of self-improvement)? Well, take heart. All conversions are not quick and complete the way that we think of St. Paul’s. | The Christian Tradition rightly upholds St. Paul and his radical shift from persecuting Christians to preaching the Gospel of Jesus. I am grateful for his model of a 180 degree conversion and passionate love and action for Jesus. That just doesn’t happen to be many people’s primary experience of how God works in their lives. | There are times in my life that I can quickly and strongly recall when I have felt internally God’s presence and known God’s love. But my experience of God has tended to be a slow, methodical, deepening of faith, often incorporating two steps forward and one step backward, rather than a fast “one and done.” | Some Christian faith traditions have tended to emphasize the Pauline “blinded by the light” moment of conversion, being born again at a particular time and place. Others have recognized a slow, patient, sometimes monotonous conversion over a lifetime of prayer, ritual, and good habits. I believe the “good news” is that God can (and does) work both ways, sometimes with the same person. | So please read and admire and appreciate St. Paul’s radical conversion story. Then read the wisdom of a wonderful Jesuit, paleontologist, and mystic who died in 1955, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J: | Above all, trust in the slow work of God. / We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. / We should like to skip the intermediate stages. / We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. / And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability--and that it may take a very long time. / And so I think it is with you. / Your ideas mature gradually--let them grow, / Let them shape themselves, without undue haste. / Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today / what time will make of you tomorrow. / Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. / Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, / and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. | -Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. from The Making of the Mind | Dear God, quickly or slowly or a little of both, please help us to grow ever closer to You, converting ever deeper to your love and desires for us and our world. Amen.
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University Ministry, Creighton University.
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These reflections may not be sold or used commercially without permission. Personal or parish use is permitted.
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Lectionary number: 519