Conversion!

 In today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 118, we pray: "Blessed is he who come in the name of the Lord."  You and I have been sent to this world blessed by the Lord, our God and Savior. We are sent to be a blessing as well.  And we are sent in God's name!

As I pray this, I think of St. Paul, who prior to his conversion was on a self-imposed mission to imprison those who following the Way, that is, who were Christians. He would get letters from emperors authorizing him to chain Christians and bring them to the appropriate authorities who would imprison them and put them to death.  One day on his way to Damascus to get such authorization, "there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground, and then heard a voice saying, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?' 'Who are you, Lord,' he asked, and the voice answered, 'I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me. Get up now and go into the city, and you will be told what you have to do.' "  At the same time that Saul was having this vision, Ananias,  a disciple of the Lord in Damascus, heard a voice call out to him: "Ananias...You must go to Straight Street and ask at the house of Judas for someone called Saul, who comes from Tarsus. At this moment he is praying, having had a vision of a man called Ananias coming in and laying hands on  him,  to give him back his sight.'"  Ananias is take aback. This is the man he knows is rounding up Christians, putting them in chains, and arresting them. No way will he get caught in this trap, so he thinks. Jesus, in the vision says to him:  "You must go all the same, because this man is  my chosen instrument to bring my name before pagans and pagan kings and before the people of Israel. I myself will show him how much he himself must suffer for my name. And Ananias went!"

The same Lord in charge of Saul's and Ananias' life is in charge of your life and mine! At times you and I, in turn, have persecuted others, spoken out against them, put stumbling blocks in their way, misjudged them and engaged in activities that we were convinced were the right things to be doing, as did Saul! Like Saul, however,  there are times when we, too,  need to be knocked down, blinded and then healed of our blindness through the intervention of others!  Like Ananias, we are at times the ones that Jesus sends to be interveners, to restore sight to the spiritually blind.

We might argue that we are not worthy to be doing the work of the Lord!  From that kind of thinking, neither was Saul worthy! Worthiness is not the question. God equips us for the work that He wants us to do. God is the worthy one; we are the instrument He chooses! The tasks might not be as mighty, so it seems, as was Saul's but as important: loving the homeless man or woman we pass on the way to the supermarket, comforting a crying child that has been denied his/her request to visit a friend down the street during this pandemic, taking on our responsibilities as spouse or as parent, waring a mask to protect ourselves and others from the coronavirus, participating in liturgical services on a regular basis at our churches, and so on! Or we may be asked, as Saul was: "Why are you persecuting me? Why are you treating a family member, a child,  your spouse, a coworker with such disdain and indifference? Why are you being unforgiving," and so on! "I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me. Get up now" and have a change of heart!