Happy Feast Day (to us)

It's a bit late by now, but this being both a work day and a Pauline feast day (and a Monday on top of that), the day was full! I prepared a lasagna for our community supper, and we just finished doing the dishes. (But not the lasagna pan, which has plenty of leftovers for tomorrow...) This isn't our "big" St. Paul feast (that would be June 30, a special commemoration of St. Paul just for us), but we celebrate at all opportunities.
The conversion of St. Paul is the only conversion the liturgy recognizes; just one token of how significant that mysterious event was. St. Paul, of course, never speaks of his "conversion," although he certainly does speak like a convert: "my former way of life..."; "I was a blasphemer and a persecutor and a man of arrogance"; "the things I once considered gain, I have reappraised as loss in the light of Christ." He speaks of the event itself as a call, a revelation and a vision ("Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?"): a rich reality that affected him in so many dimensions that he would never stop plumbing its depths and making new discoveries, finding new motives for giving thanks and praise to God: "How deep are the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! Inscrutable his judgments! Unsearchable his ways!"
Tomorrow's feast of Sts Timothy and Titus reminds us that Paul was a networker, and Timothy and Titus (but especially Timothy) were among his best "partners in the Gospel." Paul did not let his powerful experience of Jesus entrance him to such a degree that he had no time for anybody else. Instead, he let Christ live in him, whether in weakness or strength. "What does it matter, as long as Christ is being proclaimed?"