Being in Christ
Before his conversion and renaming, Paul was known as Saul. We are told he was on a journey to Damascus when a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"
What do you suppose went through his mind? He had been persecuting disciples that belonged to a new sect growing in Jerusalem. They believed incredible things about a carpenter from Nazareth, and Saul was doing his part to stop it. Three chapters earlier in the Book of Acts, he had stood by at the execution of one of their number, named Stephen. Did he wonder if it was Stephen’s voice he heard now questioning him from the sky?
Saul was also traveling north with letters to present to the synagogues in Damascus. These gave him permission to bring back in chains anyone he found who belonged “to the Way.” Did he wonder if the voice he was hearing on the Damascus road was one of his future victims? Perhaps they were crying out, demanding to know why he came to persecute them?
So Saul asked, logically enough, “Who are you, sir?"
In reply came a whole doctrine of the Church (an ecclesiology). The answer was not “I am Stephen,” or “I am one who you dragged out and handed over for imprisonment" (Acts 8:3). The answer came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” This stopped Saul in his tracks.
Paul thought he was persecuting a group of people, but the voice from heaven accused him of persecuting the very Son of God. Christ was connected to the Christian more truly than Paul could have imagined before his blinding illumination. What was this mystical connection?
Emile Mersch wrote about how the faithful possess Christ within them. He said, “Since that day, when [Paul] saw Christ in the Church which he was persecuting, it seems that he can no longer look into the eyes of a Christian without meeting there the gaze of Christ.”
This was a turning point for Paul. He went away, into the desert for three years to search the Scripture to figure it out. When he finally did, his understanding set the terms for what has since been known as the Mystical Body. The Church is not just a group of like-minded persons who get together for mutual support on Sundays. They are the body of Christ, and Christ is their head. They are in him, and he is in them.
We enter this body in Baptism. By Baptism we are grafted into the Mystical Body of Christ, and now his energy flows through us. The Church is a living body, and like all life, it must receive regular exercise and nourishment. It is fed in the Eucharist; wounds are healed in Anointing and Penance; it is communally structured in Orders and Marriage. The head instituted the different sacraments in order to meet all the vital needs of life divine in his Mystical Body.
Mersch said that after the Damascus Road, Paul could not look into the eyes of a Christian without seeing Christ. If only this were still true – that when anyone looks into the eyes of a Christian they meet there the gaze of Christ!
