for May 1
Friday in the Third Week of Easter

Luke tells the story about the conversion of St. Paul in three different places in the Acts of the Apostles. This first telling of the story serves as Luke’s introduction of Paul to his readers, though we have previously heard much about Paul’s “threats to slaughter the Lord’s disciples.”

The Italian painter Caravaggio depicted Luke’s story with Paul lying on the ground, clutching his just-blinded eyes, having been thrown from his greatly agitated horse. The actual text, you will note, makes no mention of a horse, but for some reason our popular imagination always seems to assume Paul riding on his horse (an extremely unlikely mode of travel in the ancient world) on the road to Damascus. Prescinding from historical accuracy, a commentator on the painting provides a memorable description when he says the painting creates “a sense of crisis and dislocation in which Christ disrupts the mundane world.”

That phrase struck me, not for its artistic accuracy, which I cannot judge, but for its perhaps unintended religious insight. It’s exactly what Luke intended to be the effect of the story, not just on Paul, but on us, the readers. “A sense of crisis and dislocation in which Christ disrupts the mundane world” is what the story is all about—which is to say, it’s a conversion story. Paul’s life is utterly disrupted when Christ injects a dislocating crisis.

That got me thinking of all the real-life conversion stories I have heard as a priest—disruption caused by a dislocating crisis. 

One of my favorite conversion stories comes from an elderly nun who was living as an old, bitter, self-righteous religious sister (her description) in a convent with younger sisters whom she held in contempt. One day, on retreat, struggling to pray, she was knocked off her horse—metaphorically speaking. She returned home after the retreat and the nuns couldn’t figure out what had changed her into their most heartfelt spiritual support. Obviously, her prayer had disrupted her, producing a dislocating crisis that changed her life.

When I was young one of my fellow Jesuits struck me as an extremely selfish and self-centered person. All he did was whine about not getting his way. I still don’t know what was the dislocating crisis that disrupted his life, but I’ve seen the effect. He’s spent his life working heroically with the poor in a third world country, on the front lines, in the midst of a civil war, at the risk of his own safety. What happened to him, I’ve often wondered.

Saint Ignatius devoted a lot of attention in his spiritual teaching to the grace of conversion, mostly because of his own personal experience. One idea Ignatius emphasizes is how unpredictable the grace of conversion is—“without previous cause” in his lingo—I guess because it’s Christ disrupting the mundane world through a dislocating crisis. In Ignatius’ case, it was a battle wound that was agonizingly slow to heal which served as the mundane disruption in the grand scheme of things. The subsequent pain and boredom were the dislocating crisis for Ignatius.

Of course, sometimes what looks like a conversion is not authentic, but just the onrush of manic energy that quickly dissipates. The conversion experience has to be tested over time to see if it is genuine or not. And a lot of times a conversion is not so much a sudden dramatic flash in an instant but takes time to settle in and work its long-term effects. Luke’s story probably collapsed events for dramatic purposes into a single episode, but Paul himself describes a more drawn out process in his own autobiographical account in the letter to the Galatians.

Do you have a conversion story of your own? Did it take place in a single flash of insight that overpowered you and changed your life? Or was it a slow realization that gradually turned your life around imperceptibly day by day? Or perhaps you’re still waiting for that much needed conversion, the yearning for which serving as the telltale sign that it is on its way. Pray for that moment to come; but remember that it will only happen on God’s time, which is why it will surely come.
—Walter Modrys SJ

Today’s readings can be found at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.