"...a great light from the sky suddenly shone around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?' I replied, ‘Who are you, sir?' And He said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene whom you are persecuting.'" (Acts 22:6-8) Who are you that am I persecuting?

That is another way to phrase the question. What did Saul of Tarsus discover in his conversion, in his turning? He turned to face the true subject of his persecutions of the Church: not Stephen at whose stoning he assisted, not the Christians of Damascus he wished to arrest, but He who was within them, strengthening them: Saul turned to face Jesus Christ. This is the secret that was unveiled to the apostle Paul, that set him free, that blinded him: the mystery hidden to unaided reason, but enlightening the inward eyes of faith: The mystery of Christ dwelling in His Church.

The Church is the mystical body of Christ. We can see signs of it: people call them the "notes" of the Church: her holiness, her catholicity, her apostolicity, her unity. She stretches back to the dawn of the Gospel and her mission extends to all the nations. She is one, and her membership includes those whose lives embody the highest and most noble, most perfect forms of holiness.

It is true that there exists today a temptation to see the Church only in empirical terms...To see her in terms of statistics (whether impressive or unimpressive) or personnel shortage, or God forbid, economics. More to the point there is the temptation to see her only in the light of the sins of some of her members, or simply in the light of their Christian mediocrity.

But these are not new temptations: they have always existed and they will never go away. St. Peter denied Christ three times and was made the head of the Church. One of Christ's first intimate disciples betrayed Him, which led to His death. In the end times, St. Paul forewarns us of wide spread apostasy. Let's not over-dramatize. With faith we pass through the veil of the outward appearances and we see through to the core. By faith we reach through to the essence of the Church, and we touch the Rock: the stability who is Christ. In the face of the comings and goings of poor humanity, we are not called to fret like children but to stand fast like men who have been redeemed. We are called to lay down our lives to Christ with confidence and to have faith in His definitive coming on the last day. We can do all this because of His grace which strengthens us. With the grace that converted St. Paul, we too can have the inward eyes of our heart perpetually illumined, to see the Church in her depths, in her mystery and to live that mystery to the full, as vibrant members of Christ's faithful.

We pray this week for the unity of Christians: it is important to recall that special charism of St. Paul, he who appeared with a sword to St. Dominic, in his vision in Rome. Paul is the apostle to the nations. He is not satisfied with the status quo: he moves ahead. He preaches the gospel. He runs to take the message of Christ to stranger and to friend, and he lives the life he proclaims.

This is the liberation we are looking for and that we need: the freedom to run forward with the gospel, like a torch, carried by the running dogs of mother Church, to call all men to the obedience of faith, and to call Christians to unity in love. As Dominicans, St. Paul is our father, in a special way. We teach his doctrine of grace. We pray to God for grace, that we might preach with his same universal aspirations, proclaiming the gospel in season and out of season. Let us ask him to intercede for us today, that we might turn to the Lord, to Jesus Christ, and have the eyes of our heart opened, to see deeply into the mystery of God.