Sunday was the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

There are lots of forms of pseudo-knowledge about that event.

One is the notion that he was knocked off his horse on the Road to Damascus, thanks to Caravaggio. There is no horse mentioned in Acts, and it is unlikely a tentmaker had the means to own a horse in any case.

Another is the notion that Saul of Tarsus, a Jew from birth and absolutely marinated in Tanakh, regarded what happened to him as “conversion”. Nothing in his writing gives the least support to the idea that he viewed himself as anything other than a Jew who had found the Messiah his entire religious upbringing had taught him to seek and his whole life committed in a transcendent way to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob he had worshiped his entire life. He did not become a worshiper of Odin, Quetzalcoatl, or Vishnu. He remained what he had always been: a worshiper of the God of Israel. To be sure, he remained convinced to his dying day that this God had now revealed himself in a staggering new way through the Risen Christ on the Damascus Road and this was an event that threw all of his previous revelation into a stark new light something analogous to a 2-D figure suddenly and irrevocably being seen as a 3D figure. But it was not a revelation that abolished what came before so much as fulfilling what came before.

Finally, there is the notion that the popular picture of what Paul underwent is supposed to be the template for all “real” conversions. People desperately want conversion to be a thunderclap. Knock the sinner off a horse, have the scales fall from their eyes, and BAM! they are now dedicated disciples of Jesus who just need a few rough edges buffed off.

But none of that is real. It wasn’t even real with Paul, which is why he knew it was still possible for him to run the race in vain if he didn’t keep at being a disciple every day to the end.

Most conversions are Petrine. They take forever, the sinner keeps sinning right through his life, and he has to slowly and painfully keep realizing how wrong he is. No conversion is what is popularly imagined to be Pauline: a one-and-done revolution in which the penitent is, ever after, a finished saint. Paul was nothing of the kind.

There’s a reason Paul had to tell the early Christians to be patient with one another and why Jesus had to warn the early Christians that if they did not forgive one another, neither would they be forgiven. The Church has always been full to bursting with sinners who hurt each other. And it always will be. Now and then, there are stunning saints who make startling progress toward the Kingdom in this life. But for the ordinary schlub like you and me, sin, heartache, forgiveness and disappointment with fellow Christians is not some modern phenomenon born of the Age of Iron that has declined from the Age of Gold 2000 years ago. It’s just the way things have always been.

So when some slob who has let us down many times finally makes some small step of progress, we have a choice. We can forgive and encourage that step or we can say, “Big deal! It’s all phony. They will never change. Screw you till I see perfection!” Just don’t hope for anything different from God when your own sins are brought to the Great Assizes on That Day.

Conversion is an achingly slow and incremental process nearly every time and we all have so far to go. Let us help each other down the road, not put up unclimbable barriers for the disabled–and we are all disabled.