A beautiful story today of what I have come to embrace about the conversion of Paul is what Fr. Michael Rubeling refers to as Paul’s “everyman” nature. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul refers to his own conversion “as to one born abnormally.” Paul was not one of the Apostles who walked, ate, and slept with Jesus. Like Christians today, he came to know the resurrected Jesus through a conversion. The Early Church Father Origen speaks to this similar nature: “Many have come to Christianity as if against their will, for a certain spirit, appearing to them, in sleep or when they are awake, suddenly silences their mind, and they change from hating the Word to dying for him.” The divine voice in Paul’s conversion orders him to get up from the ground, and the future apostle of the Gentiles obeys immediately. The physical movement of getting up is a kind of symbol of the spiritual uplift God’s call gives his soul. Bishop Robert Barron brings another aspect of this conversion into view. Paul waited three years to visit with Peter and the other Apostles. Bishop Barron thinks that during this period, Paul was “trying to reconcile his encounter with Jesus and the traditions of Israel that he loved.” Many in Israel expected a Messiah, but theirs was an “avenging military and political ruler like Solomon or David or a great lawgiver and leader like Moses. What Paul saw in Jesus was someone greater than Moses, Solomon, or David—and someone wholly unexpected.” Paul’s conversion is an outstanding example of what divine grace and divine assistance in general can affect in a person’s heart.