Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
A parish council meeting that had gone on and on and on finally seemed to be ending. Then someone piped up randomly with: “Father, do you think people can change?” She was off to the races with complaints about someone who had done something egregious, someone who always was committing the same offense, over and over again. Others joined in with their stories.
I started to say, You fools. Of course people can change. I changed. I didn’t go to Mass for decades, and now I do. But I couldn’t get a word in. So, I started a new page of doodling and resigned myself to another half hour before we’d be done.
Then the pastor started to speak. I stopped doodling.
“Yes, I think people can change,” he said very slowly. “But it’s very difficult.” The conversation died down. The meeting ended shortly thereafter.
Years later, I get it. Going to Mass or calling yourself a Christian when you didn’t use to 
doesn’t necessarily change you. Much more than that is involved. There’s surrender of the parts of yourself that grieve the Lord and others in your community, parts such as gossiping and judging and, yes, doodling instead of paying attention during a parish council meeting. It is very difficult.
Paul knew that too, of course. He went from being a persecutor of Christians to being persecuted because he couldn’t stop talking about Christ and the Good News. Beyond his rock-solid faith, I’m thinking the willingness of other Christians as we learn in today’s reading from Galatians 1 to accept his story of conversion fed him as his evangelization ministry took him far and wide. They believed God was capable of anything, including touching Paul’s heart and soul… and in that belief, glorified the Lord. May we have that same faith.
