NOTES for Act 9:20-21
Shaul's transformation into Paul and into an apostle is marked by the beginning of preaching. Of witness. And Paul begins this preaching immediately after baptism. The persecutor turns into a witness. How did he manage this? Before this he knew nothing about Christianity, about the Church; he had not met or spoken with any of the apostles. In fact, according to his own words in one of his letters, he did not communicate with them much later either.
In short, reasoning in human terms, Shaul, who became Paul, was not prepared for any apostolic ministry. And yet he begins his witness. Today this may seem somewhat strange to us. Not only because Paul was unprepared in the theoretical sense, so to speak: many today also go out to preach in order to bear witness to their own spiritual experience without needing any special knowledge.
But apostolic ministry presupposed witness to Christ, to meetings with Him, to His death and resurrection. Paul was not among those who communed with the risen Jesus during the days separating the Resurrection from the Ascension. It would seem that he could not be a witness, for he did not see with his own eyes what the other apostles saw. But Paul was nevertheless precisely an apostle. A witness. An eyewitness.
Only not of what took place in the days after the Resurrection, but of what happened on the Damascus road with him personally. This meeting made him a witness, and therefore an apostle. This means that apostolic ministry, the ministry of a witness who has seen Christ with his own eyes, is not reduced only to the twelve who were destined to become witnesses of what happened from the Resurrection to the Ascension.
It extends to everyone who has had occasion to meet the Risen One. Wherever and whenever such a meeting may have occurred. And this witness is, in its own way, no less important than the witness of the twelve: it says that the history of the Kingdom continues. It did not end two thousand years ago. Meetings with the King of this Kingdom are possible today as well. Therefore it can continue for us too, if, of course, we want to participate in it.