Main news for 14 July 2026

With what pain these words must have been spoken to Saul: 'Saul, Saul! Why are you persecuting Me?' The Lord is saddened to see His 'chosen vessel' directing all his efforts toward fighting Him. God had chosen Saul for His service, it appears, long before, and kept waiting for him finally to come to Him. He saw Saul, as He sees every other disciple, long before the first meeting with him (see the story of Nathanael's calling - John 1:43-49), so at this meeting the Lord is not 'getting acquainted' with a person as if He had never known him.

Meeting the Lord, a person suddenly realizes that he has been seen and heard, that the One who seems not to know him personally is deeply concerned with what he does and how he thinks. Christ, appearing to Saul, simply speaks to him sadly about the fact that what is in his heart does not bring God joy. And this personal address, this address by name, proves enough for mighty Saul to be broken and soon cease to exist - the 'old man' Saul becomes the 'new man' Paul (see Eph 4:22-24). Thus God's purpose for Saul-Paul is fulfilled.

But each of us is precious to the Lord in our own way. As the apostle Paul will later write about this: 'God arranged the members, each one in the body, as He chose' (see 1 Cor 12:12-18). And the Lord has a purpose for each of us - and each of us is called to strive with all our strength toward its fulfillment.

Today we read about the conversion of Saul, an event that not only turned his life upside down, but also in many ways determined the course of Christian history. Such conversions do not happen often, but they have happened and continue to happen. In essence, every person sooner or later meets God on his path. This meeting often overturns a person's consciousness in much the same way as happened with Paul. He considered himself a servant of God, but turned out to be His enemy, and the reverse was also true: he thought Jesus was his enemy, but He turned out to be his Lord, his life, his calling.

In fact, such an overturning of consciousness is called repentance (in Greek, "metanoia," a "change of mind"). When a person suddenly sees that his whole life is a persecution of Christ, which he carries out inside himself or among those near and far from him, the mercy of the persecuted Son of God is also revealed to him. He will not only accept him among His disciples, but will also lay on him a new mission: not to tear apart, but to build up Christ's Church.

In these words the path to Christ of almost every person is briefly set out. An encounter with Him is always unexpected; we do not recognize the God whom we seem to be seeking, without whom we are tormented and suffer. Paul was sure that he was defending the truth from those who had gone astray and fallen away; he was going to defend his own God. And when God addressed him, Paul asked the one question to which every person seeks an answer. Who are You, Lord? Who are You? Cosmic energy, a heap of idols that are easy and convenient to worship, or perhaps something abstract and distant, not involved in the life of the world in general or of a particular person in particular? Who is God? This is what troubles and disturbs a person.

Paul was the first to receive the answer in its simplest and most guileless form. God has nothing to hide from us; He is ready to reveal Himself: Jesus, whom we carefully and consistently persecute, whom we do not want to recognize. At that time a person needed living testimony in order to believe, and even now this is one of the simplest ways to tell a person about Christ. But now, when the Bible is available almost everywhere, how often people refuse the primary source so that under no circumstances will they hear: "I am Jesus."

We try to find any other answer to the most important question, putting all our strength into it. It is hard to kick against the goads, the Lord says. Not merely hard, but unbearably difficult; yet with a persistence worthy of a better use, we try to find a path where there is no place for God who became Man, was crucified, died, and rose again, God who comes to each person and says, "I am Jesus." And yet, if while following Paul's path we accepted this answer as he did, the world would look completely different.