[stephenkhoo]

Wednesday, 25 January, 2012, the Conversion of St Paul, Apostle
WHAT DRIVES YOU IN YOUR MINISTRY AND IN YOUR VOCATION

SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 22:3-16; MARK 16:15-18

What is it that drives a person to work hard in the ministry? On the surface, when one is very zealous in the ministry, we presume that they are doing it for the love of God and His people. The truth is that if we search deeper into our hearts, we find that there are many motives for serving even in the Church. Some motives are purer and others are not so noble if not selfish.

Indeed, passion for the ministry must not be mistaken for being commitment or zeal. One can simply be acting out of an ambition to be successful and recognized as capable so that they feel admired and loved. Many of us, like the apostles, are seeking for position, recognition and power rather than serving people for the sake of God or simply because of love. (cf. Mk 10:35-45) They too fought over position as many in the ministry do over portfolios and appointments. Jealousy is common among members and sometimes we encounter lots of subtle manipulation in seeking for power. For some, they might be merely doing it out of duty or a sense of responsibility for fear that God would be offended and they would be punished for failing to fulfill their obligations.

Even St Paul was very zealous for the Law before he was converted to the Lord. In his own account: “I studied under Gamaliel and was taught the exact observance of the Law of our ancestors. In fact, I was as full of duty towards God as you are today. I even persecuted this Way to the death, and sent women as well as men to prison in chains as the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify.”

Whereas when we speak of passion for the gospel and the work of evangelization, we mean that we do it for Christ and out of love for Him and His people. Passion has to do with love for something or someone. We do it because we love doing it and are convinced that something is worth doing and deserving of our efforts and time. In this case, passion for Christ and His Church means a deep love for Him and out of this love for Him stems our passion for the ministry because we love all whom He loves. Being passionate for the gospel means that we are so in love with the Good News, which is none other than Jesus Himself and His message and as a consequence, we want to share Jesus and His gospel with everyone.

This passion for Christ and the gospel would even entail suffering at times since love and passion often require suffering and sacrifices. This was the case of St Paul who, after his conversion, would have to suffer much for the proclamation of the gospel. The Lord told Ananias when he was reluctant to lay his hands over Saul to heal his eyes that “this man is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before Gentiles, kings, and children of Israel, and I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.” Anyone who has a passion for the gospel or for anything must suffer for it. There is nothing that is worthwhile achieving can be had without a price. This explains why passion, which is a love for something or someone, necessarily entails suffering. The one who loves must suffer for what he loves. The price of love entails sacrifices. Without sacrifices, there is no love except the love of oneself in a perverted and selfish manner.

But no one can suffer for love unless he is first loved or has fallen in love. Hence, passion in the ministry presupposes that we have been loved by Christ. This was the case of St Paul. He was loved by the Lord, the least likely of all men since he was a great persecutor of the Church. If Paul were converted, it was because of the overwhelming gratitude of being forgiven, healed and loved by the Lord. One would expect punishment and condemnation but God chose to love him even more. And this precisely is the Good News, that God loves sinners. This made St Paul later on to write that “where sin increases, grace abounds all the more.” (Rom 5:20). He wrote based on his own experience!

Indeed, true passion for the gospel must originate from a personal encounter with God; an encounter that engages the mind and the heart, intellect and the will. This presupposes therefore that more than just a knowledge about God, it must be a knowledge of God. In other words, it is not an objective or conceptual knowledge about God but a subjective and personal knowledge of Him.

It is within this context that we can learn from St Paul with regard to His passion for Christ and for the gospel. It was His encounter with the Lord Jesus on his way to Damascus that brought about his conversion. As a rabbi and a student of theology and the Laws, he knew everything about God. Yet, he knew that in his own life, he was a hypocrite because he was not able to live out what the Law commanded. On the contrary, he became self-righteous and merciless, as seen in the way he pursued and persecuted the Christians, putting many to death or had them arrested and put in prison.

But having met Jesus on the way to Damascus who appeared to him in the form of a light, and hearing what Jesus said to him, he was convinced that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. That one encounter with the Risen Lord changed his whole life and orientation. Instead of being a persecutor of the Christians, we read that after he was healed by God through Ananias, “he began at once to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.” Such a radical change prompted the Jews to say, “Is not this the man who in Jerusalem ravaged those who call upon this name, and came here expressly to take them back in chains to the chief priests?” And we also read “Saul grew all the stronger and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus, proving that this is the Christ.”

To be sure, the whole life of St Paul following this encounter can only be explained with reference to his conversion experience. After meeting the Lord Jesus, he was never the same again. His theology and his writings are all rooted in his reflection of what it means for the Lord Jesus to die for him, considering that he was the least amongst all people to be His apostle. Yet, his call to be an apostle was confirmed by Ananias who told him, “The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will, to see the Just One and hear his own voice speaking, because you are to be his witness before all mankind, testifying to what you have seen and heard.”

Nothing can make a person live fully for someone or for something if not out of love alone. Ambition cannot fulfill us. Duty will not make us give up everything for a person or a message. But for the love of someone, we would even give up everything for that person. For the love of their children, mothers would give up everything, even their life, freedom and dignity just to raise their children up and give them the opportunities to be successful in life. It was this profound, indescribable and unsuspected entry of God’s love into his life and his utter mercy for him that had St Paul surrender his entire being and life to the Lord. From that moment, nothing could reign in his passion for Jesus and the gospel. When there is love, we can do anything. A top-selling Indian author of a cookbook said, her philosophy is to cook for love. She said, “when you cook for love of your family, friends, it will always turn out well and cooking is easier.”

Those of us who are active in Church often cover up our lack of personal experience of the Lord with theological knowledge. We can speak so much about Jesus, but if we were honest and searched deeply into ourselves, we would know that we may never have known Christ personally. It takes lots of humility and self-searching to come to admit that this Jesus whom we teach and preach so much about is but an ideology, not a person whom we can openly say to people that we have met Him and we know that He is the Son of God, the way St Paul could confess publicly, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal 2:20) If many Catholics have lost the zeal for the work of evangelization in proclaiming Jesus as the Lord and Saviour of humanity, it is because they have no real personal relationship with the Lord. As a consequence, many are turning to non-Christian forms of prayer which only reinforce an impersonal relationship with the Mystery or Silence, leading them further away from the Lord.

Today, we also conclude Christian Unity Week. The greatest scandal of Christianity is the division among Christians. Because of our division, the gospel of Christ is discredited. Because of our division, Jesus is hurting, for He came to establish only One Church and what He desires most is the unity among ourselves so that we can be a potent and credible force in the world. That is why He prayed for Christian unity just before His passion. Christian unity must be rooted in our common love for Jesus and because we love Jesus, we do not want to divide Him and His body the Church, causing Him to cry in grief for us. For the sake of Jesus and His gospel, let us pray that in spite of differences in the interpretation of the gospel and structures and ministries in the Church, let us love each other, regardless which Christian community or church we belong to.

Let us found our unity in our common love for Jesus and that if we find anyone who is brought to Jesus, we should rejoice rather than lament that he did not join our church. In the final analysis, faith in Jesus who is the Son of God who gave His life for us is the cause of our salvation. As for doctrinal differences, let us pray that we will continue to dialogue and search for the truth together so that one day there will be one Church having one faith, one Lord and one Spirit. There is a danger that ecumenism is reducible to who is right or wrong, arguing purely on the intellectual level rather than the real sharing of what we believe in Jesus and how we experience Him. Only when we come to realize that we have a common experience of Jesus, can we then translate this experience into doctrines and theology.