Why Are You Persecuting Yourself?
Why live in the chains of sin, when Christ has come to give you freedom? Why keep your mouth bound shut, when Christ has given you words to proclaim the Good News?
I’ve been contemplating a lot on Saint Paul’s conversion story, and allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal to me, important lessons that we can learn from it. Paul (then called Saul) was persecuting Christians, until one day he was on the road to Damascus and he heard the voice of Christ asking, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” In persecuting Christians, Saul was persecuting Christ.
We can even take this a step further by saying in persecuting Christians, Saul was persecuting himself. Saul would soon become Paul, who would soon become Saint Paul, one of the most well know Christian Saints.
This got me thinking: How often do we persecute ourselves just like Saul did? God has a specific plan for every one of us. Our lives have a purpose, our lives have meaning. We each have a role given to us by God, and we are the only ones who can fulfill the specific role designed for us, and given as a gift to us. When we live lives contrary to God’s plan for ourselves, we end up becoming a shell of who we were created to be, and thus end up bound in the chains of sin and confusion. Thus, we persecute ourselves, binding God’s will within us in chains, stopping ourselves from reaching our full potential as sons and daughters of The Living God. We trade the freedom that Christ offers us, for being held captive in sin.
Saul went from killing Christians to being given the gift of speaking in tongues so everyone could hear the Gospel in their own language. Talk about a conversion story, why don’t ya?
Saul was witness to the death of the first Christian martyr, Saint Stephen. As Saint Stephen was being stoned to death, he cried out to God to forgive those who had condemned him to death and had stoned him. The prayers of the great martyr were seemingly heard, as Christ thus took great mercy upon Saul, and made him to be one of the greatest Saints of the Church.
As Saul persecuted Christians, Saul (now Paul) as a Christian was being persecuted himself. It seems Saint Paul’s life was marked with persecution on all sides.
As Christians, we can expect persecution from the world, as Christ said “If the world hates you, know ye, that it hath hated Me first.” - John 15:18 Though others may persecute us, we should not persecute ourselves. Every time we choose to sin, we persecute ourselves. Every time we reject doing as we ought to as faithful believers, we persecute ourselves. Every time we choose against who we were created to be, we persecute ourselves.
The Church today would certainly get a plethora of letters from Paul. Perhaps one letter would be on how we persecute ourselves. Why live in the chains of sin, when Christ has come to give you freedom? Why keep your mouth bound shut, when Christ has given you words to proclaim the Good News? Why make your heart a prison, when it was made to be the abode of The Living God? Why live to die, when you were meant to live forever?
Brothers and sisters, let us not persecute ourselves into living bound in the chains of the fallen world, but let us truly live as we are meant to live. The Spirit of the living God dwells within our chest; we must not keep The Spirit bound, but let The Spirit be free to radiate its light forth from our interior, giving peace and joy to ourselves, and all those around us.
Serviam.
April 27th is the Feast Day of Saint Zita.
I invite you to read my new articles of the week on Catholic365.com :
"You Are Worth The Resurrection"