Given on the eve of the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul at St Paul's Church, Wood Green, on 24 January 2016.
To see ourselves as others see us! The Scots among you will know that was a saying of Robert Burns, who was born, of course, on 25th January 1759. To see ourselves as others see us!
St Paul must have wondered often how others saw him. After all, he had been chief persecutor of the first Christians. And now he claimed to have met the Risen Jesus; and to have been converted to the Christian way, in a flash, literally.
I’ve never had any religious experience like that. But I do know something about seeing ourselves as others see us. When I was to be ordained, I sent a personal invitation to each of the young men with whom I’d shared a house at university.
Not one of them replied. ‘So that’s what they think of me putting myself forward for priesthood,’ I said to myself.
I didn’t give it another thought till I walked out in procession for my ordination Mass; and, would you believe it?, there they all were, sitting in a row, looking very proud of themselves at having found the church!
When I told them afterwards that I’d thought it was because they felt I wasn’t worthy, they laughed lovingly and said, ‘Well, we know you’re not worthy but we always knew it was what you were called to do: it’s who you are!’
To see ourselves as others see us! How much we learn from it! I’m sure Paul must have felt the same, onwdering, ‘What will people think of me?’
‘What will they think when I tell them what has happened to me?’ His story is incredibly dramatic, isn’t it? To be hurled from his horse to the ground in a great flash of light; and to hear a voice, the voice of the Lord himself, saying, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, and you are persecuting me.’
One of the first paintings ever to make an impact on me was a depiction of this scene, Caravaggio’s masterpiece in Rome. If you’ve never seen it, you should Google it later today and see it for yourself. It shows Paul lying on the ground after being felled by his horse. He lies on his back, right next to the horse’s hoofs. His arms are open wide, embracing the light. There is a beautiful golden light all around him.
But next to him we notice something much darker: his sword resting in great folds of red cloth, as is to symbolise the rivers of Christian blood that he had meant to shed when he first set out for Damascus.
I was looking at this picture again recently in Rome. And the words that came into my head were words known to all of us, modern words, the words of a modern hymn: ‘I was blind but now I see.’
‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me; I was blind but now I see.’ Saul was blind. He ‘was breathing threats to slaughter the Lord’s disciples.’
As we read in Acts, ‘He had gone to the High Priest and asked for letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, that would authorise him to arrest and take to Jerusalem any followers of the Way, men or women, that he could find.’
He was blind, blinded by his own hatred of the Christians. But now, by amazing grace, he can see, by the grace of this event and Jesus’s intervention, he has been saved from his own folly.
It is moving to hear Paul writing about it years later here in his letter to the Galatians: ‘You must have heard how merciless I was,’ he tells them. The last sentences of this letter testify to his experience of God making him a new creature: God has made him new; and so full is he of love for the Lord and his body the Church that that is now the only thing that matters to him.
Hear how he puts it: ‘As for me, the only thing I can boast about is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified and I to the world. It does not matter if a person is circumcised or not; what matters if for him to become altogether new creature.’
During the Year of Paul, I read all his works. And I did so with a pencil in hand so that I could mark the passages which touched me most. I then spent several months, praying each of these passages I’d highlighted. I’d recommend you do the same, if ever you feel you want to know Paul better and learn from him. You’ll find so many encouraging sayings!
For many people, their favourite is when he tells Timothy, to stop drinking water and to drink wine instead. ‘You should give up drinking only water and have little wine,’ he says. Yes, you can see why that’s many people’s favourite!
But seriously, he has so many phrases which are given to us to help us on our way, help us grow more like Jesus. Like when he says, ‘When I am weak then I am strong’, meaning, of course, it’s when I’m tempted that I can show my strength.
‘You are God’s temple.’
‘You belong to Christ.’
‘All the runners in the stadium are trying to win but only one of them gets the prize. You must run in the same way, meaning to win.’
These are some of my favourites. It’s good to know which are yours: they become a resource, a support, an encouragement, as I say.
Perhaps the most touching is when Paul speaks of his weakness, that mysterious thorn in the flesh which he says must have been given him to stop him getting too proud.
‘About this,’ he says, ‘I have pleaded with the Lord three times for it to leave me but he has said, “My grace is enough for you, my power is at best in its weakness”.’
In other words, God understands; and he will help you use your weakness to find real strength. God understands: he understands us better than we even understand ourselves.
This is of course a theme dear not just to Paul but to many of the saints, none more so than St Therese of Lisieux, another saint towards whom I’m sure many of you are devoted. Therese said something so helpful about this.
In the last few months of her life, she began to receive letters from a young priest by name of Maurice. Fr Maurice was struggling in his priesthood and was greatly helped by Therese’s advice. But he was losing Therese; she was dying.
When she had written to him her last letter, he replied saying: ‘What I find hardest, dear Sister, is to think that when you are in heaven you shall see me for what I am, a great sinner and the poorest of priests.’
Therese forced herself off her death bed to write one more letter; and what she said I find so encouraging for all of us: ‘My dear Maurice, you have to understand, when I am in heaven I shall see you not with my eyes but with God’s eyes, which are only full of compassion and understanding for you. Have courage; and fear not: he looks on you with nothing but love.’
How it helps to see ourselves as others see us, and even more to be encouraged to to see ourselves through the eyes of our loving God!