Acts 9.1-20; Psalm 116; John 6.52-59
“He is my chosen instrument” the Lord is said to have declared of the unlikeliest of his disciples, dramatically taken from working for the total destruction of the Church [Acts 8.3] to a new work.
Paul is called to make the name of the Lord Jesus known both to the people of Israel and to the Gentiles. St Luke tells Paul’s story in striking parallel to the way he had earlier related Peter’s, each of them an apostle remade by an encounter with the Lord that had at once transformed him and empowered him.
Apart from the martyrdom of Stephen and a brief allusion to that of the apostle James
[Acts 12.2], the characters of Acts simply disappear when they die. Whenever someone dies, however violently, someone appears to replace him. That is the way that the Lord builds his church. And when Acts 28 reaches its end, perhaps there must be a chapter 29 to tell the ongoing saga of those who have received new sight and the Holy Spirit and who go forth to preach by word and deed that “Jesus is the Son of God.”