The Road to Damascus

THESE WORDS, the Evangelist tells us, our Lord spoke to St. Peter "signifying by what death he should glorify God." He, who in the impetuosity of youth had run out to meet martyrdom, "Lord, I will go with thee to prison and to death," was to find martyrdom, after all, but at a time, and in circumstances not of his own choosing. God wants even the sacrifices we make for Him to be made in His way, not in ours. That is the plan with which He most commonly deals with us, His creatures; it was not only to St. Peter, not only for the guidance of those who covet the crown of martyrdom, that the words were spoken. We shall not do wrong, then, I think, in applying them to the career of others; surely not in applying them to the career of that great colleague of St. Peter, whose commemoration we celebrate today. "When thou wast younger thou didst gird thyself and didst walk whither thou wouldst, but when thou shalt be old another shall gird thee and lead thee whither thou wouldst not"—might it not have been said of St. Paul, signifying not only by what death but by what life he was to glorify God?

Think of St. Paul as he was in his young days, as he was when he girded himself to set out on that fateful journey to Damascus. How superbly the cocksureness of his youth takes all his prejudices for granted! Does it ever occur to him to wonder whether, after all, these Christians may be in the right? I don't think so. In the wrong? Of course the Christians are wrong! He will hardly stop to argue with you, so impatient is he to be off on his errand, one foot ready in the stirrup. Why, they have spoken contemptuously of the Law of Moses, the Law that has made the Jewish people what it is. They have suggested that it is actually possible to worship God elsewhere than in the Temple—the dear old Temple, with all its historic associations, with its beautiful, orderly round of services, with its unique position as the center and rallying point of all that is best in the national life. They have even been known to fraternize freely with the Gentiles, these impossible Gentiles, who eat pork, who don't wash, who have never been through the healthy discipline of a sound rabbinical education, people of no class whatsoever, and not even of a Semitic type! They never make any converts among the upper classes, or even if they do, what good comes of it? Think of poor old Ananias, who joined them only the other day! They have all their goods in common, which means that they have no proper admiration for that sturdy spirit of commercial enterprise which has so distinguished the Jewish race all over the world. For the most part they're not Jews at all, they are Galileans, who speak with a brogue and are for ever getting into trouble with the police. In the wrong? Of course they're in the wrong! They are disloyal, un-Jewish, a menace to the national life. They want stamping out, that's what it is, d'you hear? Stamping out!

I am not suggesting that the prejudices of youth are always wrong—how could it be so? I am suggesting that they are in themselves a little hasty, a little unreflective. They are not, when all is said and done, a complete guide to right action. But they are all the light young Saul follows, Saul in the pride of his vigorous manhood, and his Tarsus degree. Don't believe it, when people tell you that he was already wavering in his allegiance to his Jewish faith when he set out on that journey, that his conscience was already aroused, and only needed the touch of a divine inspiration to complete a conversion already begun. There's not a word of that in his apologia: "And I indeed did formerly think that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth . . . and many of the saints did I shut up in prison; and being yet more mad against them, I did persecute them even to foreign cities." Does that sound like a man half-convinced? No, when he fell from his horse on the Damascus road, the whole direction of his thought boxed the compass. He was trepanned by divine grace; he came on board the Ark of Christ like a sailor who had been shanghaied in the slums of a seaport. Another had girded him, and led him whither he would not.

We do not know to what extent St. Paul's worldly position was damaged by his conversion to the Christian faith. One of the most acute of Protestant critics has suggested that in all probability he was cut off without a penny by a rich family, and that his own writings bear traces of that experience. I do not suppose it would have been easy to recognize the proud young horseman on the Damascus road in the insignificant evangelist at Corinth who passed as the foreman of Aquila and Priscilla, tent-makers, waiting, when trade was bad, for the arrival of fresh charitable relief from the Church at Philippi. But this at least is certain, that from the day of his conversion, St. Paul was never his own master, was constantly being headed off by the divine Providence and made to alter or cancel his plans in defiance of his own wishes. What more natural, than that the convert should preach to his fellow countrymen? "Get thee hence," says our Lord, "for I will send thee far off to the Gentiles." He goes obediently: he wants to preach the Word in Asia, but "they were forbidden by the Holy Ghost"; in Bithynia, but "the spirit of Jesus suffered them not." "We would have come unto you," he writes to the Thessalonians, "I, Paul indeed, once and again, but Satan hath hindered us." And to the Romans, "1 was hindered very much from coming to you, and have been kept away till now." St. Paul did get to Rome in the end, but he reached it under a military escort, in chains! "When thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not."

Yes, when St. Paul first learned to obey the voice of duty, his life became a slavery to duty thenceforward. Only he does not call it a slavery; he calls it "the glorious liberty of the sons of God." There is only one slavery really, as the great convert knew; and that is to disobey the voice of your own conscience. This evangelist, constantly at the beck and call of divine command and human circumstances, is the same man who said to himself, years before, "How about a trip to Damascus? I ought to find good hunting there." Only all that lies far behind him now.

May I be permitted to recall the fact that the text on which I am preaching today is the same passage from which I took my text on the last occasion when I preached at a Protestant service? May I even be permitted to quote what I said then? I was speaking, as the occasion demanded, about the parting of friends. "Divisions, sharper than the sword of earthly jealousies, differences, wider in their estrangement than mere geographical distance, may drift us and them apart; all the comfortable certainties of familiar surroundings we may be called upon to renounce. The past, with its memories, will not be a home to which fancy can return, but a distant harbor at which we have touched, now faded beyond the horizon. To be ready to give up all, houses, and brothers, and sisters, and father, and mother, and lands—that is what it means—to follow Christ."

So much of bitterness even those may feel, to whom the call of grace comes early in life, when they find themselves threatened with severance from the past. And what of those whom this same imperious mandate of conscience finds already well on in years, already hardened into fixed habits of life, fixed grooves of thought? How difficult for them to settle down into a world whose ideas and values are to largely strange to them, to make fresh acquaintances, to allow for new angles and new prejudices among those whose Faith they share! "It is good for a man," says the prophet, "when he hath borne the yoke from his youth"—there are rigidities about the Catholic point of view, matter-of-factnesses about the Catholic atmosphere, to which a mind already formed does not easily accommodate itself. And when a man in middle life, whose tastes and daily occupations have accustomed him to a different outlook, when, above all, a minister of religion, with all the fads and foibles of his caste, makes his submission to the Catholic Church, then the exchange of an allegiance is not effected without some laceration of the mind. We are all a little like fish out of water when we are landed in Peter's net.

It is not a light burden, then, at the best of times, that is undertaken by these later laborers in the vineyard of Christ. And now, what if they find themselves, in those same difficult moments, faced with the loss of all worldly prospects, and even worldly means? Those who, perhaps from childhood upwards have never had any other ambition than that of serving God in the ministry; who have never, in consequence, learned the arts or cultivated the opportunities which would open to them, now in middle life, the doors of any other profession? Marriage or other ties which they cannot avoid make it impossible for them to aspire to the priesthood. They have children dependent on them, to be fed, to be educated; and the unselfish care with which they have provided for these hitherto has left no margin for saving. Their relations are Protestants who disapprove too deeply of their religious departure to help in financing it; or they are too proud to apply for relief to those who might read them a lecture on the folly of their conduct. With all that before them, how many are there whose hearts failed them a little when conscience made itself heard? How many, alas, whose hearts still fail them, so that the voice of conscience is muffled? "When thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not."

Oh, I could harass your imagination with pictures of what some natures may have to undergo, sensitive natures, accustomed to a position which enabled them to enjoy certain comforts, and to hold their heads high. But would you wait to hear harassing details before answering such an appeal? Common sense reveals the necessities of the situation; common humanity demands that they should be met. Only one institution exists which can meet them with that tact and discrimination which undeserved and unexpected poverty demands; it is that institution which appeals to you. Have we done so much, you and I, for the conversion of England, that we can look with the unconcerned eyes at the destitution of such converts? Have we gone so far towards winning back Our Lady her dowry, that we can grudge some little dowry to these novices of the Catholic Church? God forgive us if we cannot emulate the spirit of St. Barnabas, when he raises up among us so often the spirit of St. Paul!