Barring our mobile phones, we love to boast about our bigness: big bungalow, big vehicles, big business, bigwig buddies and so on.
Though we might impress others with our bigness brags, isn’t it more inspiring to meet prominent persons who renounce what the world treasures most in order to serve God and humankind?
Today, Christians celebrate the feast of the “Conversion of Saint Paul”— one of the bravest and brainiest of Christ’s disciples. Born in Tarsus and popularly called “Saul” after the first Israelite king, he was well-versed in scripture, conversant with Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic and Phoenician, and proficient in philosophy. Saul was schooled as a Pharisee — those “separated ones” known for rigid observance of law, scriptural scholarship and holier-than-thou attitudes.
Christ’s first followers feared Saul since he was a ruthless and remorseless persecutor of Christians. He watched his companions stone Stephen — the first Christian martyr — to death.
Moreover, with help from powerful religious authorities, he zealously destroyed churches and imprisoned Christians.
The conversion of Saul to “Paul”— literally, “little one” — is incredible. Proceeding to persecute Christians, Paul sees a blinding light that floors him and renders him temporarily blind. He hears a voice: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He asks, “Who are you?” The voice replies: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Return to the city and you’ll be told what you must do.”
That was a moment of metanoia—Greek, for “conversion” — a turnaround.
Saul’s new avatar as Paul is a transformative turnaround. From hating Jesus he begins to love and live for him, saying, “I now no longer live; Christ lives in me.”
From persecuting Christians and slaying them, he begins serving everyone, saving them from slavery to sin.
From destroying churches, he begins to build bridges among believers, restoring ruined relationships.
Paul instructs his disciples: “I showed you by my hard work that we must help the weak, remembering the words of our Lord Jesus Himself: “It is more blessed to give than to receive’.”
He also writes: “The greatest [of all virtues] is love.” From Paul, we can learn: (a) to work hard; (b) to love God and others unconditionally; and, (c) that it is more meritorious to give than to receive.
Paul’s conversion was a change of heart: hridaya-parivartan. He inspires us to eliminate our ego, that big “I”, and become aware of our littleness before God. As fruit of our turnaround, we begin to see new lights for living and creative ways of loving. Ultimately, we will realize that the lushness of our littleness re-creates us as bigger world citizens—capable of reaching out to others in ever-widening circles.
May Paul-like littleness continue stirring us to attain spiritual bigness!
The writer is a professor of theology. He can be contacted at fragons@gmail.com
