After reading Sholem Asch’s account of St. Paul’s journey to
Damascus I began to reflect on my own road to Damascus. When I began to delve
into my Catholic religion I wanted to know “the facts”. What were
those of my beliefs that were grounded in fact and verifiable in experience?
There came a time when I gained confidence in my religious beliefs.
I attained
what I believed to be an intellectual understanding of my faith. I called it an
integration of my faith with my daily life. Sure, there were still mysterious
aspects to my religion. Those I had to take on faith. After all, religion by
definition requires that we believe is some things that we cannot prove. I had
the assurance that my knowledge of Scripture and the teachings of my Church
provided me with a solid faith; a faith that could guide me through life,
however imperfectly I could follow it.
Yet, Asch’s fictional account of Saul’s metamorphosis to
Paul caused me to reflect on a transition of my own. Asch portrays Saul as a
well-educated Pharisee, stubborn and self-assured in his understanding of
Jewish beliefs. He knew for sure when he was hearing blasphemous and heretical
teachings being preached in the Synagogue! Can my own self-assurance blind me to the spirit of my Faith as it did with Saul?
Have I undertaken a transition from my “intellectual” understanding of my faith to a “spiritual” understanding? How far along am I on that transition? To what degree am I living an intellectual faith? When will I, like Paul, come to the metanoia from a self-assured, intellectual approach to my Faith to an acceptance of and submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ?
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Through a series of “seizures” and nights of visions and
mental wrangling Saul's assurance in his faith begins to weaken. He is zealously
attempting to eradicate those of the new sect who were undermining his
religion. He witnesses in those he is punishing a quiet acceptance of the
reprimands, imprisonments and lashings he is inflicting on them. Rather than
being angry with him they exhibit an assurance in their faith in the recently
crucified messiah. Their patient endurance begins to work its way through his
beliefs. His intellectual understanding of his religion begins to take on a
spiritual understanding.
Sholem actually begins his account of the metamorphosis of
Saul immediately after the scene where Saul with two other witnesses attends the
preaching of Reb Istephan in the synagogue. He is convinced of Reb Istephan’s blasphemous
preaching. Asch describes Saul’s condition as he is on his way to his sister’s
house.
From the book:
“There were certain signs by which Saul of Tarshish
recognized the beginning of the onset…. All day long he had felt it gathering above
him, like a storm cloud. A fiery circle was pressing against his temples, and
increasing darkness was shed upon his eyes. Nevertheless there was within him a
bright stirring, as though a new soul were being poured into him. Saul of
Tarshish hated this condition, which made his footsteps uncertain, and deprived
him of self-control, turning him over to a power over which he had no
influence…. And yet he longed for it, as a man longs for the warm, encircling
arms of a beloved wife…. It was with him as though he were being sped beyond
the limits of this world and entering into another which knew no limits and no
boundaries; a world in which there was neither yea or nay, only in infinite
space of blazing brightness, through which he fell forever… and continued to
fall… through infinite time…. In that condition the impossible became possible…
he dreaded to enter into this world, as a man dreads to cross the threshold of
the unknown, as a man dreads to cross the threshold between life and death….
Yet he was drawn irresistibly toward the threshold, and the nearer he drew to
it the more powerful became the attraction of the unknown, of the infinite, of
the limitless, of the impossible-possible. He had been fighting against the
pull of that condition all day long; he fought against it now as he hastened
toward the house of his sister. He stumbled rather than walked through the
narrow streets of Jerusalem; his limbs obeyed his will and memory when he
himself could no longer direct them. At last he reached the door of his sister’s
house, but he could go no further. There the condition fell upon him, as if it
had been a murderer lying in wait, and flung him to the ground.
…
In the midst of his seizure Saul beheld an angel of the Lord
cleaving the air in downward flight toward him. The Angel sank, feet downward
into the earth, and only the upper half remained visible, but that upper half
was blinding white, as though it were all fire within, covered by a human skin.
The angel lifted his wing-arms to heaven, as if in prayer, and the face of the
angel, which shone with divine fire, was likewise upturned, and on it rested a
vision of eternal grace, as if the eyes of the angel had penetrated to the
glory….
When Saul came to he marked, as always after one of his
seizures, that he had for a time lost the power of sight. In the darkness which
surrounded him he saw, in recurrent visitations, the angel which he had beheld during the seizure, and he wondered greatly over the meaning of the
vision….” pp. 105-106
