How was St Paul's conversion unique?
And what was it that won his conversion from God?
What was it that won St Paul’s conversion from God?
In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us:
How the early Church’s persecution led to remarkable growth, spreading the Gospel far beyond Jerusalem.
Why St. Paul’s miraculous conversion was a pivotal moment, uniquely marked by the personal intervention of Christ.
What spiritual insights this conversion reveals about persecution, martyrdom, and divine providence in advancing the Church.
He shows us that the Church, though oppressed, grew stronger through the sacrifice of her martyrs and the divine calling of leaders like St. Paul, turning suffering into triumph.
To find out what St Paul did after his conversion, see below. His actions are instructive for converts today, both in terms of what is ordinary for them, and what would be extraordinary.
Setting up a YouTube channel and starting to teach others about the faith would be an extraordinary thing for a new convert to do, and would seem to be quite rash without a clear mandate from God or the Church:
The Conversion of St Paul
From
Mother of the Church: Mary in the First Apostolic Age
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, Ch. VIII, pp 166-176
The advance of the Church by persecution
We have spoken of the conversion of the Samaritans, of the Ethiopian eunuch, and of a probably large number of events of the same kind, the details of which have not come down to us, as compensations offered by God to His Church for her sufferings under the first great persecution.
The word compensation barely expresses the full truth. The martyrdoms and other sufferings which followed on the death of St. Stephen were in themselves gains to the Church.
They increased the fortitude of her children by the glorious examples of those who suffered.
They gave opportunities for a witnessing to the truth which might never have been otherwise afforded.
They spread the name of our Lord and the influence of His followers even among their enemies, in whose ranks were numbered, as always, many good souls who had taken their part against Him in ignorance and unbelief.
They had given the whole community of His disciples a claim on the fulfilment of that promise of fertility which was implied in His own gracious saying about the grain of wheat, which must needs fall into the earth and die if it was to become fruitful, and to which great fruitfulness was promised if it should so die.
Besides this, the persecution had increased the number of the glorified saints in Heaven, and so had furnished to the Militant Church fresh helpers before the Throne of God, whose prayers were now mighty with the power of the world to come.
Thus the gains which followed on the persecution were not altogether mere compensation for losses, in the ordinary meaning of the words. They were expansions of His Kingdom, the acquisitions of fresh realms and of new multitudes of subjects.
So it always is, although it may not always be in the Providence of God that these fresh conquests should follow so immediately as in the case before us, on the sufferings by which they were won. In this case, moreover, they were more than the simple additions of new territory to an Empire already fully founded and organized.
They were steps in the development of the Empire to its full natural proportions. They were stages in its growth from infancy to youth and manhood. They shook off the trammels which hung around the Church, as swathing clothes around a child. The hearts and minds of the faithful were expanded and enlarged, and they began to see more clearly the amplitude of the inheritance of the Church, and the principles which were to come into play in order that she might grasp that inheritance to the full.
Zeal kindled in the converts
It was undoubtedly a great step when the Samaritans, with whom the Jews would have no intercourse, became loyal children of the Church, sheep of the same fold with the faithful of Judaea and Galilee.
It was another step, when the message of the Gospel was borne to the far south by the Ethiopian eunuch, although he may have addressed himself, in the first instance, only to the task of making his Jewish fellow-countrymen partakers of his own ineffable joy.
It was something to fill Cyprus and Antioch, and perhaps Spain, Provence, and Asia Minor, and other parts of the Empire, with devout believers, even though at first the Word was preached to the Jews only.
The mere instincts of Christian charity must have been enough to make such converts eagerly long for the time when the glad tidings of salvation could be handed on to the heathen around them, many of whom had been already won from the religion and morals of paganism by the sublime simplicity of the Jewish creed and the purity of manners which accompanied it.
It is often the way of God to kindle in Christian hearts a burning desire for some onward step of progress, which He is preparing to grant to their prayers, and which, is the execution of His own long matured purpose. He inspires prayer, that He may grant what He desires.
St Paul’s conversion
The next step in this crowning by God of the sufferings of the Church with the precious gift of fruitfulness was the preparation of the chosen instrument of the greatest change and advance which have ever occurred in the history of the Church.
We are all perfectly familiar with the story of this conversion, as it is told to us in the narrative of St. Luke, which has also to be supplemented by the statements of St. Paul himself, both in his speeches in the Acts, and in his Epistles. It appears from all that remains to us of this kind, that, as has been said, the persecution in Jerusalem itself was carried out in the most thorough manner.
Private houses were searched for persons who were supposed to be believers, they were taken to the synagogues, where some form of words which contained a blasphemous abjuration of our Lord was proposed to them, and if they refused this, they were punished in various ways, including death. So severe a persecution naturally drove large numbers of the faithful to take refuge in flight, and they would probably betake themselves to cities more or less remote, where they might practise their religion in peace.
The authorities at Jerusalem were soon aware of the exodus of the mass of the faithful from Jerusalem, and this might perhaps have contented all but the more violent spirits among them. But such men as Saul must have felt that as long as the new sect was allowed to hide itself in other places, it would not be sufficient to remain content with its apparent extermination in Jerusalem, even if that could have been effected.
The position accorded to the Jews in the Empire, in the cities and provinces of which they were allowed to retain a distinct national organization, made it possible to pursue the fugitives and bring them to justice, as it seemed, as well elsewhere as in the capital. So Saul went to the Chief Priests, and obtained letters to the synagogue at Damascus, and perhaps other places, empowering him to seize any disciples of the Nazarene whom he might find, and bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
Various accounts in the Acts
We have already said that there are three accounts of the miraculous conversion of St. Paul. Besides the simple narrative of St. Luke, in the proper place in the history, St. Paul, on two separate occasions, spoke of it in public in speeches which are recorded in the Acts.
The first of these occasions is that of his speech to the people from the stairs of the fortress in Jerusalem, when his life was in danger from their violence. We have the report of this in the twenty-second chapter of the Acts. The other occasion was when St. Paul had to defend himself before Agrippa and Festus, and this is reported in the twenty-sixth chapter. On each of these latter occasions St. Paul’s words added something which had not been mentioned before.
But these additions are made rather to the account of the words of Ananias to him at Damascus, or of our Lord’s in his subsequent trance at Jerusalem, than to the incidents with which we are all well acquainted. We take from these at present the words which relate chiefly to the actual incidents of what we call his conversion.
“And it came to pass as I was going and drawing nigh to Damascus, at mid-day, that suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me, and falling on the ground, I heard a Voice saying to me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? And I answered, Who art thou, Lord? And He said to me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, Whom thou persecutest. And they that were with me, saw indeed the light, but they heard not the Voice of Him that spoke with me.”1
That is, as we gather from the narrative of St. Luke, they heard sounds as of some one speaking, but could not distinguish the words.
And both in the earlier narrative, and in the second speech, we have the additional words of Our Lord, “It is hard for thee to kick against the goad.” The image used represents resistance to a lord or master, and it may seem to imply that Saul may have received some promptings of conscience or intimations of the will of God before the moment of his conversion.
In the last speech St. Paul adds much to the words of our Lord on this occasion.
“But rise up and stand on thy feet, for to this end have I appeared to thee, that I may make thee a minister and a witness of those things which thou hast seen, and of those things wherein I will appear to thee, delivering thee from the people and from the nations unto which now I send thee, to open their eyes, that they may be converted from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and a lot among the saints by the faith that is in Me.”2
Our Lord was visible in his humanity
We may gather many things from these great words of our Lord to His chosen Apostle, uttered, as St. Paul tells us, at the very time of his conversion. In the first place, it is clear, though it is not distinctly asserted, that St. Paul at this time saw our Lord in His Sacred Humanity. Our Lord says, “For to this end I have appeared to thee, that I may make thee a minister and a witness of those things which thou hast seen.”
Thus St. Paul’s office was to be in all respects alike to that of the other Apostles, and it is thus that, when he counts over the witnesses of the Resurrection of our Lord in the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, he mentions himself last, but still as one of the witnesses, as one born out of due time, and unworthy to be called an Apostle because he had persecuted the Church of God. Nevertheless, he was a witness, and it is on this account as well as on others that the Catholic theologians teach us that this appearance of our Lord to St. Paul was not a simple vision, such as those which are so often vouchsafed to the saints.
In those visions the Person who appears is not present in the body, but only apparently so, whereas there are some few occasions, of which few this is one, on which it is believed that the Sacred Humanity of our Lord was actually Itself present and visible, so that the words which St. Paul heard came out of the very mouth of our Lord Himself.
Thus St. Paul became a witness of the Resurrection, because he could testify that he had seen and conversed with our Lord after His Resurrection from the dead. This alone would be enough to raise our thoughts regarding this apparition to a higher level.3
Supernatural enlightenment of St Paul
In the second place it is clear from these words of our Lord that St. Paul must have received, then and there, a very large amount of supernatural enlightenment as to the religion of which he was to become a chief preacher, its mysteries and principles and methods of propagation.
After the first simple declaration, “I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest,” our Lord proceeds to speak to His Apostle, rather as to the details of his particular mission than as to the elementary truths of the Creed. He tells him he is now sent to the nations or Gentiles, and that he will be protected in the execution of his mission, both from them and from the people, by which word must be meant, as it seems, the people of the Jews.
The mission to the Gentiles, however, is the most prominent and particular point in the language here used, and this is evident both from the words in which the mission is conveyed, the personal pronoun being used, “to whom now I Myself send thee,” and also by the sequel in which words are used which do not so aptly apply to the chosen people—“to open their eyes that they may be converted from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a lot among the saints by the faith that is in Me.”
His mission to the Gentiles
Holy Simeon at the Purification had used similar words for the conversion of the Gentiles:
“A light for the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.”
It is natural also to find St. Paul often using the imagery of this first revelation of our Lord to him, as when he speaks to the Colossians of “giving thanks to God the Father, Who hath made us worthy,” or able, “to be partakers of the lot,” or inheritance, “of the saints in light, Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the Kingdom of His Beloved Son, in Whom we have redemption through His Blood the remission of sins.”4
It is probable that it is to this first revelation that St. Paul refers when he speaks of his Apostolate as received not from man but from God. And thus he speaks of his vocation as having been determined by God from the very beginning—“When it pleased Him Who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him among the Gentiles”5—and in that place he goes on to dwell on the fact that he did not receive his instruction for the purposes of his Apostolate from man, not even from the Apostles themselves, but by revelations communicated to him as it appears, in the years of his retreat in Arabia.
Magnificence of God’s gifts
All these sayings of St. Paul at subsequent times must be taken into account as illustrating the simple narrative given us by St. Luke of the circumstances of his conversion.
They show us that that conversion was no common incident even among conversions, but brought about by the special and personal interposition of our Lord Himself. They raise the conversion of St. Paul to the level of the very few most memorable and significant occurrences in the history of the Kingdom of the Incarnation.
It was not so great a work of God as the Annunciation, or other mysteries in the lives of our Lord Himself and of His Blessed Mother, but short of that unattainable height among the works of God, it must be understood to have but few peers among such magnificent outpourings of grace. It is something like the call of Abraham or of Moses, something like the confession of St. Peter, and the conferring on him of the power of the keys.
It must not therefore surprise us if we have to dwell at length on this momentous event in the history of the Church during the time when it was the arrangement of Providence that our Blessed Lady should be still upon earth. And it sheds a great light on the subject of the immense fruitfulness of persecution, and also of the intercession of the martyrs, that this step in the advance of the Kingdom should be so immediately connected with the death of St. Stephen, and the outburst of savage persecution of which it was but the first act.
The spiritual gifts
The ordinary effect on the saints of the visions which are occasionally vouchsafed to them, even when such visions are not of so very high an order as that of which we are now speaking, is to fill them with light, joy, spiritual strength and vigour, to increase in them enormously any gifts which they may have before received, while at the same time they are filled with confusion and self-abasement, a great sense of their own nothingness and unworthiness, and thus with the most profound humility.
It is also natural that they should be filled with great light and strength and courage as to the particular mission, or vocation, or work, with reference to which these Divine favours have been granted to them. It is hard to think that our Lord can make Himself present in these extraordinary ways without some special design, and this must be much more true when the visitation is of that extremely rare and exceptional kind which was the case in this apparition to St. Paul.
We may fairly measure the greatness of the spiritual gifts which were now bestowed upon St. Paul by the fact that the Incarnate Redeemer of the world verily and in Person made Himself the messenger from Heaven on this occasion.
We may fairly also suppose that when our Lord told the prostrate saint to rise and go into the city, and there it should be told him what he was to do, the words do not merely refer to the instruction which he was to receive from Ananias or any other minister of the local Church, but also to further communications of the same kind with those which he had already received, and that thus the three days and nights during which he remained without food and in darkness were passed in the most intimate communication with our Lord, as He Himself said to Ananias, “Behold he prayeth.”6
In the next part, Fr Coleridge will explain…
How even St. Paul, though personally converted by Christ, was sent to the Church to be formally received through Baptism.
Why his retreat to Arabia was a crucial period of divine instruction, preparing him to proclaim the Gospel with Apostolic authority.
What the harmony between St. Luke’s and St. Paul’s accounts reveals about the Apostle’s mission and his profound humility.
He will show us that St. Paul’s journey from persecutor to Apostle underscores the Church’s vital role in salvation and the divine preparation for his unparalleled mission to the Gentiles.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, Mother of the Church
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Acts xxii. 6-9
Acts xxvi. 16-18.
Vide Suarez, De Mysteriis Vitae Christi, disp. Li. Sect. 4.
Coloss. i. 12-14.
Galat. i. 15, 16.
Acts ix. 11