A key word tying together today’s readings is “baptism.” 
 
Do you know, or do you actual observe or celebrate, your Baptism date?  Right, Baptism date is what I asked.  Nearly everyone knows and acknowledges their human birthdate.  Hallmark cards asserts that “industry-wide, more cards are sold and sent for birthdays than for all Holidays combined,” but I wonder how many of us who are Christian observe our Baptism dates.  Do you take your children out to dinner on their Baptism anniversary?  Do you light their baptismal candles and tell again the story of the event of their Baptism:  who was there, what reading was read, what was sung (excuse me??? Sung???)?  Do you know and remember your god-parents? 

I don’t believe these are silly questions.  Today in the Great Feast of the Conversion of Paul we hear the wonderful story of his encounter with the Risen Lord, the way he was blinded by the face of Christ, whom he recognized to be the God (Yahweh) in whom he (Saul) believed.  Saul is healed of his blindness by Ananias, but we might miss a very important instruction that Ananias gave to Saul who chooses to respond to Jesus and become Paul:  “. . . You will be the Lord’s witness before all, to what you have seen and heard.  Now why delay?  Get up and be baptized . . .”

Paul heard Jesus say: “Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  What Saul realized was that to persecute Jesus’ friends, companions, even the little ones, is to persecute Jesus Himself. He was called to make great changes in his attitude and his actions.

We Christians of the 21st C are like Paul in that we have not been privileged to know Jesus in his life before his passion and death.  We do have the opportunity to know the Resurrected Lord, however, and for Paul that was enough to make those demanding changes.  Paul understood that to know and follow Jesus is to know and follow Him in the life of the community of the Church – the men and women who are largely faithful to their Baptismal call; and to know the poor and persecuted with whom Jesus identifies, and it is to enter into confident prayer that God is fully alive in three Divine persons inviting us to know the Divine self in our own inner lives through prayer and the sacramental life of the community. 

As I prayed with this text I asked Paul to share with me something of his inner experience and was caught up in a sense of the Gaze of Christ as he asked me the question: “how faithful are you to the graces of Baptism I gave you?  Will you be my servant, trusting in my mercy even now, after all these years?” 

The gift and the demands of baptism do not get old and wear out.  Ever new is the call to life in Christ and the labor of loving care for the all of God’s people.  Paul’s conversion is a perfect feast for our conversion or re-conversion to the task of loving God, God’s creation and all of God’s people.  Ignatius of Loyola reminds us that love is shown in deeds more than in words.  How will be act baptized today?

“Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every person.”