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00:00How are you, my dear brothers and sisters? Welcome back to this course following in the footsteps of Paul.
00:24Paul, Apostle of Christ, in whom we seek to reflect and try to mature in all that we have already experienced,
00:38what we have already experienced, having made a personal decision to follow Jesus in our lives,
00:45to decide to be authentically Christian. But as we said in our last chapter,
00:51Well, at this point our branch is still fragile, it's weak, and it's very easy for the
01:00The enemy of the soul can tear it out with a good yank, and with that, our life would gradually return.
01:07Processes that are sometimes imperceptible but truly effective. We can gradually return to our...
01:13The old state, where the life of the world was what we lived. So this course invites us to
01:22that we follow in Paul's footsteps, and if we truly want to follow the apostle's path, then it is vital
01:30As we said in our last video, so that we can understand more clearly and deeply what
01:37What happened in Damascus? Well, that's where his life begins, and everything that happened in his life will depend on that.
01:45life will depend on what happens now in our lives. Believe me, my brothers, we will never be
01:54good Christians and less apostles unless what happened to Paul has happened in our lives
02:03There in Damascus. Without this experience, which we call the Damascus experience, our life would never have been the same.
02:10It will progress. We then have to verify that this has happened in our lives. From the facts of the
02:18From the apostles and Pauline writings we can deduce that before the conversion of Saint Paul, Saint Paul was
02:26As we see in the writings, he was a harsh persecutor of the early Christian community. He was a person
02:34She was very religious, but she didn't understand what the Christian life was, she didn't know who Christ was, and this... well, she...
02:43This leads us to see that conversion, especially for Saint Paul, is not as a
02:50Shub. That is, remember that shub is compliance with the law, it is the invitation to return to the law, if not to
02:58Pablo, what happens in Damascus will end up being a real change of course, a complete turnaround.
03:06completely transforms his life. It is and will be a new understanding of law and life in every sense, and this is
03:15which also needs to happen within each of us. There is a new understanding. Probably
03:23Let us also be very good Catholics, even after having come out of the Jordan or of
03:29Whatever charismatic experiences you may have had, you can feel renewed.
03:34transformed, but what is going to happen in your life or what is beginning to happen in your life, you will go
03:42realizing that it will completely transform everything you thought and everything you believed.
03:48What you thought was good probably won't be so good, and what you thought was bad might not be.
03:54It won't be so bad. If we pay attention to the book of Acts, we'll realize...
04:02as before the experience of Saint Paul in Damascus, because his life was completely different.
04:09Not only did he approve of Esteban's death, but as he says in chapter 8, barely a chapter
04:16Before his conversion, he says he wreaked havoc in the church, entering houses, and carrying people away.
04:24He forced men and women and threw them in jail. This was Paul.
04:30He himself openly confesses this in that personal apology he makes addressed to the Galatians, in the
04:40which he clearly states, without mincing words, without obfuscation, referring to his own life, that his life was a
04:49A life of wickedness. I mean, if you go to Galatians, chapter 1, starting from verse 13, you'll realize
04:59That truly, because Paul was, well, I'll put it this way, very much like you and me
05:06before the Jordan, before your querygma, before having made a personal choice, before having
05:15I've had a personal experience with Christ. I'll repeat what I told you in chapter...
05:22Past. Not everyone receives this profound experience on that particular day. Perhaps it will pass.
05:32months, weeks, sometimes years in which this experience gradually unfolds and our life goes
05:42sanctifying. That's why we want to take everything we're seeing, grounding and strengthening what
05:50It's probably already happening in your life, although in a very early stage.
05:58These sources from which Paul speaks of his conversion testify to the fact of that total transformation
06:10of the apostle of Jesus Christ, wrought by God in this encounter, on that road to Damascus, where he was going
06:17to continue wreaking havoc as it had already done elsewhere. If we take as an example the
06:25The experience of Saint Paul and we present it as an element that helps us understand what it means
06:31True conversion, then, would necessarily require us to accept that this experience,
06:41This conversion, this one is born not from a ceremony, baptism or whatever you want, but from an inner revelation where the
06:55Man discovers himself loved and freed by God. I don't know what your Pentecostal experience was like. I don't even know if the
07:07I pray to God that you have had it. But if you haven't had it, brother, you have to ask for it.
07:15Because it wasn't a ceremony. It wasn't a ceremony where you placed your hand on top of the Bible. It wasn't a
07:22Baptism ceremony, whether Catholic or Protestant, where you were put in the water. No.
07:29No. It is an inner revelation where man discovers himself loved and freed by God.
07:39Indeed, the sacrament of baptism introduces us to the life of the Spirit. It introduces us to the Church.
07:48It introduces us to Christianity. But it doesn't give us the Pentecostal experience. It doesn't give us the experience
07:56of internal transformation in our moral life. There is a transformation that we saw in our
08:03The first course is an ontological experience. That is, our being changes. But our morality,
08:13That depends on how I see things, how I understand them; those things don't happen there. They happen when you,
08:21At some point in your life, once you're fully aware, you have Pablo's experience. The experience
08:28Pentecostal, where man, yourself, discovers himself loved and freed by God.
08:39Was this your experience? Is this what you are experiencing now?
08:45It is, therefore, on the one hand, what we would call a Christophany, in which the Lord Jesus manifests himself
09:00somehow to Saul through a light that comes from heaven. But there are other manifestations in the
09:09that you, at a certain moment, you feel truly loved by God, freed.
09:18They are experiences, they are experiential elements where you clearly perceive that loving presence of God.
09:28There is a Christophany. God makes himself present to you.
09:33Each person would tell their own story.
09:38But there has to be, at that moment, at the moment of what we call baptism in the Spirit,
09:45When you consciously accept Jesus as Lord of your life, the Lord also manifests Himself to yours.
09:53On the other hand, it was an inner illumination about the divine plan of salvation for humanity.
10:05The eternal God, the one in whom Paul believed, now reveals his Son Jesus to him,
10:15who is the creator God, Lord of history.
10:22It is the same God of the covenant in whom Paul believed.
10:26Paul had always believed in him, but now he sees God, who reveals himself to him as a father, as the spirit, and as the Son.
10:40But there is a revelation where he understands that this person who appears to him on the road,
10:48This Christophany that he has reveals clearly to him that he is the Son of God.
10:55And somehow, because of this enlightenment, he understands it, he accepts it.
11:00That's why I tell you, it's a gift from God that has to do with faith.
11:05It's something that happens in life, at a certain moment, where suddenly everything is clear.
11:14All our doubts begin to disappear and Jesus begins to have a real, concrete relationship with each one of us.
11:27This experience, as Jesus tells Peter when he discovers him as the Messiah, is an action of God.
11:40Peter discovers Jesus as the Son of God.
11:45And she tells him, it can't be a direct revelation of your life, of what you have seen,
11:52but it is something that the Father has done in you.
11:55Therefore, pay attention to what Jesus tells us in chapter 16 of Matthew.
12:03I invite you to go to your Bible.
12:05Let's read chapter 16, verse 17, which I think is important for you to underline.
12:11so you can see that it's not simply a human issue.
12:16It is something that God, God himself, has to do in your heart, as he did in the case of Saint Paul.
12:26Let's get to our text, if you please.
12:31And the text tells us the following.
12:33Then Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of John,
12:43For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father who is in heaven.
12:51In other words, brothers, Peter, even though he had seen Jesus perform miracles and heard everything he had already heard,
13:02He could not say, nor determine, that Jesus was the son of God.
13:09He can't do that.
13:11The Father has to reveal it to him, just as He does to you.
13:18The Father must also reveal to you that Jesus is his son.
13:24And at that moment, to feel enlightened and somehow comprehend and understand
13:30and above all to feel deeply loved by a God who has chosen you to be part of his people,
13:38of his kingdom and his mercy.
13:41Okay, we'll continue in a moment with our chapter 2.
13:47We'll be back in a moment.