The Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle

The Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle is the feast that celebrates the moment when the fierce persecutor of the Church was seized by the grace of the risen Christ and made the greatest of his missionaries. Saul of Tarsus, a zealous Pharisee who breathed threats and slaughter against the disciples, was journeying to Damascus to arrest the Christians there when a light from heaven suddenly flashed about him, and he fell to the ground and heard the voice: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

Blinded for three days and then healed and baptized, the persecutor became the Apostle Paul, who would carry the name of Christ before the Gentiles and their kings and pour out his life in tireless preaching, in sufferings without number, and at last in martyrdom at Rome. His conversion stands as a shining sign of the power of God's grace to transform even the hardest heart, and the feast, kept on 25 January, fittingly closes the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.