• Home
  • About
  • BIO
  • Conferences
  • Contact
  • Follow Gerard on FB & Twitter
  • Speaking

Coming Home

Dr. Gerard M. Nadal: Science in Service of the Pro-Life Movement

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« ABC Link: Next Stop, Congress
Pro-Life Academy. Biology: Cells (IV) »

Saint Paul’s Conversion and Ours

January 25, 2010 by Gerard M. Nadal

Today is the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle.

Paul’s story is familiar to most. One of the great Rabbi Gamaliel’s prize students, Saul was filled with righteous loathing for this new Jewish sect which proclaimed an executed carpenter to be Messiah and God. Paul stood by approvingly and watched the cloaks of the men who stoned to death the first of this sect’s martyrs, Stephen. It was while he was on his way to Damascus to crush the nascent Christian community that he had his first encounter with the risen Christ. The words of Jesus were poignant:

“Saul, why do you persecute ME ?”

Beginning with that encounter Saul, who later used his Roman name Paul, would develop for us the Theology of the Body. Jesus’ words to Saul on the road that day reflect perfectly his words in Matthew 25 on the Last Judgment, “Whatever you do to the least of these my brothers, you do unto me.”

This is the foundation for a proper Christian understanding of the right use of sex. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church, as well as later Popes, would explain that conjugal love is the prefigurement for the interior life of the Blessed Trinity: The radical self-donation between Father and Son generating the Holy Spirit of God. It is within radical self-donation that life becomes possible. Such life is not merely offspring, but family itself; bound up in and suffused with sacrificial love. Such love in human families is meant to prepare us for the love we are expected to demonstrate in Heaven, where we too will give all of ourselves to God.

Sex in this context is holy. It is at once reflective of the self-donation in all other quarters of the marriage, and the reinforcer and catalyst for future self-donation. It naturally gives biological life, but more importantly it teaches parents how to imbue their children with spiritual life, teaching the very essence of sacrificial love.

Paul knew this.

That’s why he equated fornication with idolatry. He knew that the use of sex merely for personal gratification was simply using the other person as an object, which is extremely corrosive of the understanding of death to self in love. Such self-centeredness is not only a rejection of the very means God gives us of glimpsing the interior life of the Trinity, it takes that ecstasy and turns it in on itself. Pleasure by the individual, for the individual.

Out of such an idolatrous paradigm grows the pernicious weed of narcissism, which admits no personal responsibility for another if one’s own good (Meaning one’s own gratification) is threatened by the needs of another.

Enter abortion.

Saul was spiritually blind. He missed the deeper realities of Being, caught up as he was in the myopic focus on the letter of the law. In his first encounter with the risen Christ, he was gifted with physical blindness, to teach him how blind his spiritual blindness had made him. In His great wisdom and goodness, God allowed Saul’s sight to be restored by one of those whom he set out to destroy.

We have many such Sauls among us today; those who direct abortion clinics, whose sight has been restored by the ones they held in contempt.

Like Paul, they have become the most ardent and effective witnesses to the truth. Like Paul, they have sacrificed all for the sake of the truth. They have lost money, family and friends as the price of their conversion.

Today is their feast day. We rejoice with them. We welcome them. We pray for them.

Share this:

  • Share
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Abortion, Dignity | Tagged Abortion, Conversion, Saint Paul | 1 Comment

One Response

  1. on January 26, 2010 at 3:01 PM Janet

    “Enter abortion.”

    “Saul was spiritually blind. He missed the deeper realities of Being, caught up as he was in the myopic focus on the letter of the law.”

    You’re so right; we need to pray for those so attached to the law that they forget the babe in the womb who dies. May they hear the babies’ cries before it’s too late. May our politicians’ hearts be changed.



Comments are closed.

  • Archives

    • July 2021 (1)
    • January 2021 (7)
    • November 2020 (1)
    • May 2020 (2)
    • September 2019 (1)
    • May 2019 (2)
    • April 2019 (1)
    • February 2019 (1)
    • April 2018 (2)
    • January 2017 (1)
    • December 2016 (1)
    • November 2016 (1)
    • October 2016 (10)
    • July 2016 (2)
    • June 2016 (1)
    • May 2016 (1)
    • April 2016 (1)
    • March 2016 (1)
    • February 2016 (3)
    • December 2015 (1)
    • November 2015 (2)
    • October 2015 (1)
    • September 2015 (1)
    • August 2015 (3)
    • April 2015 (1)
    • February 2015 (1)
    • December 2014 (3)
    • November 2014 (1)
    • October 2014 (4)
    • September 2014 (15)
    • August 2014 (6)
    • June 2014 (5)
    • May 2014 (1)
    • April 2014 (2)
    • March 2014 (2)
    • February 2014 (1)
    • January 2014 (3)
    • December 2013 (17)
    • November 2013 (9)
    • October 2013 (12)
    • September 2013 (4)
    • July 2013 (2)
    • June 2013 (5)
    • May 2013 (2)
    • April 2013 (3)
    • March 2013 (6)
    • February 2013 (2)
    • January 2013 (1)
    • December 2012 (18)
    • November 2012 (6)
    • October 2012 (13)
    • September 2012 (1)
    • July 2012 (10)
    • June 2012 (13)
    • May 2012 (8)
    • April 2012 (1)
    • March 2012 (11)
    • February 2012 (21)
    • January 2012 (5)
    • December 2011 (18)
    • November 2011 (3)
    • October 2011 (23)
    • September 2011 (24)
    • August 2011 (22)
    • July 2011 (22)
    • June 2011 (29)
    • May 2011 (8)
    • April 2011 (11)
    • March 2011 (18)
    • February 2011 (42)
    • January 2011 (26)
    • December 2010 (30)
    • November 2010 (34)
    • October 2010 (33)
    • September 2010 (16)
    • August 2010 (15)
    • July 2010 (7)
    • June 2010 (21)
    • May 2010 (33)
    • April 2010 (14)
    • March 2010 (41)
    • February 2010 (36)
    • January 2010 (59)
    • December 2009 (59)
  • Categories

    • Abortion (258)
    • Advent (26)
    • Biomedical Ethics (82)
    • Birth Control (51)
    • Bishops (87)
    • Black History Month (10)
    • Breast Cancer (65)
    • Christmas (26)
    • Cloning (4)
    • Condoms (16)
    • COVID-19 (1)
    • Darwin (2)
    • Development (6)
    • Dignity (119)
    • Divine Mercy Novenas (10)
    • DNA (3)
    • Embryo Adoption (2)
    • Embryonic Stem Cell Research (6)
    • Eugenics (29)
    • Euthanasia (8)
    • Family (44)
    • Fathers of the Church (11)
    • Fortnight for Freedom (1)
    • Golden Coconut Award (3)
    • Health Care (14)
    • HIV/AIDS (5)
    • Infant Mortality (2)
    • IVF (4)
    • Joseph (6)
    • Lent (17)
    • Margaret Sanger (19)
    • Marriage (6)
    • Maternal Mortality (2)
    • Motherhood (12)
    • Neonates (1)
    • Personhood (20)
    • Physician Assisted Suicide (4)
    • Planned Parenthood (64)
    • Priests (50)
    • Pro-Life Academy (23)
    • Quotes (10)
    • Radio Interviews (3)
    • Right to Life (34)
    • Roots (1)
    • Sex Education (25)
    • Sexually Transmitted Disease (12)
    • Stem Cell Therapy (7)
    • Transgender (1)
    • Uncategorized (206)
  • Pages

    • About
    • BIO
    • Conferences
    • Contact
    • Follow Gerard on FB & Twitter
    • Speaking

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Coming Home
    • Join 866 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Coming Home
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    %d bloggers like this: