5th Sunday of Easter. B.

You may not have even heard of it, and even if you have, it has probably not had much impact on your life, but for the last ten months or so we have been living through what Pope Benedict declared in 2008 ‘The Year of St Paul.’ And so, before it comes to an end next month, I thought we might spend a few minutes today thinking about Paul and reflecting on what his story has to tell us about what it means to be a Christian in our own time. Who was he? What did he do? And what is his relevance to our own lives today?

Well, he was born in Tarsus, probably around 5-10 AD, making him ten years or so younger than Jesus himself. The fact that he was born in Tarsus was itself significant. Tarsus was in what we think of today as Turkey and in those days it had a large Jewish community of the ‘diaspora’. In other words, Jews who, through contact with the Roman Empire, had spread out into the wider world around the Mediterranean. Paul himself was a very devout Jew but, living in Tarsus, he was equally familiar with the pagan religions of the Empire. This knowledge shines through his letters and becomes the foundation for his later ministry to the gentiles, enabling him, both literally and metaphorically, to speak a language they could understand and reminding us that, if we are to continue the work of evangelization today, then we, too, must learn to understand and speak the language of the men and women of our own time. Paul, through his background and upbringing, was a kind of bridge between the Jewish and pagan worlds and much of what we think of today as Christianity is more influenced by those pagan ideas Paul picked up in Tarsus than we realise. The whole notion, for example, of ‘Redemption.’...But that’s another story!

Despite all this pagan influence, however, Paul was a deeply committed Jew and it was this that brought him to Jerusalem as a young man to study under the famous teacher Gamaliel. And it was his enthusiasm for Judaism that led him, in time, to persecute the new Christian Church. Convinced that this new heretical sect were a threat to everything he believed in, he set about destroying it. Outside Damascus, however, all that changed.What actually happened is not as clear as we might think. Paul himself in his letters makes no reference to Damascus or being knocked off his horse or any of that stuff. Only Luke, in Acts, mentions such things. And even if they did happen, people have speculated about what exactly might have been going on. All kinds of psychological explanations have been offered and have included such things as sunstroke or a form of epilepsy often connected with visions and strange religious experiences. But what is certain is that somewhere along the way something happened to Paul which changed his whole life. And that is what matters. And I would draw a parallel between this and many of the things that go on in the Church today. All over the world there are stories of visions and revelations which people believe in. Most of them, however, the Church refuses to have anything to do with and I would have nothing to do with them either. As I am perfectly entitled to do as a Catholic, I don’t personally believe that Our Lady, for example, has ever appeared anywhere. But that does not mean that people who go to places where these things are alleged to have happened do not experience God there. Many clearly do. But in the end, whether it is Lourdes, Fatima or the road to Damascus, there is only one things that matters, and it is spelt out for us in the second reading. No vision, no religious experience is worth a penny unless it bears fruit in something real that is not just mere words. The evidence of God at work is always practical, Christ-like love.

And in Paul’s case the fruits are obvious. He immediately begins to proclaim the Gospel in Damascus where he had gone to arrest the followers of Jesus. When, three years later, he went to Jerusalem, however, people there, as we heard in the first reading, were very suspicious of him and he had to be smuggled out of the city, lowered from a window, and sent off to Tarsus for his own safety. And so began a period of quite a few years in Paul’s life that we often forget about: years of prayer and reflection in the Arabian desert around Petra where his conversion experience deepened and God prepared him for the work that lay ahead. And this reminds us that, if we are to be bearers of the Gospel to the men and women of our time, we, too, need to spend time in training and preparation. But how willing we are to embrace such training is the big question.

Paul’s conversion happened in 36AD and it was not until ten years later, in 46AD, that the first of his three great missionary journeys through Turkey, Cyprus, Crete, Greece, possibly Spain, and finally Rome began. These lasted twenty years, involving great hardship and much travelling, ending with his death in Rome by beheading in 64AD under the Emperor Nero.

So what relevance does all this have to the world of the 21st century? What does it have to say to us as we confront the challenge of proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel to those who share this moment in history with us? Well, it tells, first of all, that conversion is always possible. That if Saul can become Paul then no human being is beyond redemption. It also tells us that, to be a follower of Jesus, we do not have to be perfect. Paul certainly wasn’t. He was a carnaptious and difficult little man who fell out with one person after another. Noone seems to have been able to put up with him for too long. But what he had was courage and a deep commitment to the person of Jesus. Jesus really was the vine and Paul the branch which, cut off from Jesus, could do nothing. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Paul took seriously the task of teaching all nations and, through faith, was able to achieve what to others seemed impossible. And in that sense, he is a model for our time. Called to evangelize the world of our time, many think it cannot be done. But such negativity and pessimism had no part in Paul’s thinking. He was open to the new thing God was doing in the world and was willing to play his part in it. And what we need today are a few more like him.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Paul’s experience and knowledge of the pagan world, acquired during his years in Tarsus, prepared him for the work of taking the Good News to the gentile nations. This experience broadened his mind and enabled him to understand ways of thinking very different from his own. And so we pray that, through our travels abroad as well as our contact with people from other countries who come here to Scotland, our minds will be broadened in the same way............Lord hear us

Paul, in an experience he himself gives no details of, met the Risen Jesus in his life and this experience changed him. From being a persecutor of the Church, he became its greatest champion. And so we ask God to raise up in our time many Pauls from among the ranks of those who, in recent years, have walked away from the Church and become its greatest critics. We ask God to turn this experience to good and provide from the ranks of such critics the modern apostles we need..........Lord hear us

In the second reading today, St John tells us that our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active. We are, in other words, to love one another the way Jesus told us to. Only by doing this, he tells us, can we be certain that we are children of the truth. And so we pray that everything we do and say here each week as we gather to be fed and nourished by the Word and the Eucharist will bear fruit in the way we reach out to all around us who are in need........Lord hear us

Spiritual writers down through the ages warn us against attaching importance to things like visions, private revelations and other questionable religious experiences. Those who sometimes had such things, the great mystics, attached no importance to them, realising that they could be caused by things which had nothing to do with God. And so, in an age of uncertainty when such things tend to proliferate, we pray for the grace and wisdom we need to understand this........Lord hear us

In the first reading today, we hear how the Hellenists argued with Paul and wanted to kill him. They could see very clearly that what Paul was preaching involved a break with the past and they were determined to resist this with all their might. They were, in effect, doing to Paul what he had done to others before his conversion. Their minds were closed and they did not want Paul or anyone else to open them up. And so we pray for anyone among us today caught in that same trap............Lord hear us

After his conversion, Paul withdrew for a number of years to reflect on what had happened and to allow the experience to deepen in him. This was like a time of retreat and reflection when God trained him for the work that lay ahead. And so we pray for ourselves, faced as we are with the seemingly impossible task of re-evangelizing the world of our own time, that we will be open to and prepared to undertake the training or re-training we need today.......Lord hear us