“Go, all over the world, all preach the Gospel” (Mk 16.15). Preach the Gospel is to make a change in people’s lives. That’s why Jesus wanted to convert Saul, a Pharisee who was persecuting Christians, not because he was bad, but because he was faithful to what the Pharisees preached and lived because they were keepers of the law.

When Saul realized that the doctrine of Jesus was spreading and that people were changing and being baptized, he believed that Judaism was at risk because he thought these people were being fooled. Saul was so faithful to the prophets and their story he began persecuting Christians, for  fidelity to Judaism. There was a heart that loved God, but was on the wrong path. He was a man who was willing to give his life for what he believed. Therefore, the Lord himself decides to convert him. And appears to him in Damascus, causing it to fall and stay blind. Saul, still on the floor, ask: “who are you?” And Jesus replies to him: “I am the one whom you are persecuting”.

Jesus has told us a lot about the hardening of hearts. That’s what happened to Saul, who, in front of the light of Christ, went blind and spent three days like that. Then the Lord appears to Ananias and gives him the mission to go to the House of Saul and pray that he is cured of blindness and baptized in the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ made of Saul a man chosen, and who would have to suffer for the cause of God and the Gospel. Ananias obeys the Lord and, running the entire risk, find Saul in bed, blind, without the strength to eat, feeling humiliated by the whole situation, because he had dedicated his whole life to Judaism and, at that moment, via Jesus, wanted to transform it entirely.

Ananias tells Saul that Jesus had sent him so that he would be cured of blindness and became filled with the Holy Spirit. Then, he lays hands on him and prays for him. From that moment on, Saul, which happens to be called Paul, takes on this new reality. Already converted, he goes to the synagogue by his own Holy Scriptures to prove that Jesus was the Messiah for whom they expected. It confuses the Jews and Christians also.

The conversion of Saul is very important for us, because we also need this conversion. We have received the grace of the Holy Spirit of Jesus himself, in baptism, but how many people abandoned this first conversion, this first fervor and became an ordinary person, cooled and hardened your heart? Even the family and so many people of your street, your neighborhood, they need to receive, in all humility, the laying on of hands, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, to be reinflamed and taken by him, and thus transformed to take the Gospel to the ends of the Earth.

The world, that is inside you, is in need of conversion. It’s like the “big world” you need the Holy Spirit to convert.

That today is a day of conversion, change! We need this to happen to a lot of people who live in this little world, this is your home. We need to bring the Gospel to this world that needs so much of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Come, Holy Spirit!

Your brother,
Monsignor Jonas Abib

Portuguese version