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00:00Music
00:30Well, dear brothers, we are back again, and well, with what we desired a moment ago, if we take as an example of conversion the experience of Saint Paul, then we would have to accept that it is born from an encounter with Christ, which is in reality an inner revelation where man discovers himself loved and freed by God.
00:56This is why the kerygma is so important, because the kerygma is what will bring about, what will propose in us, that experience of Damascus; it is what will help God to enter our hearts in a special way and show us his love.
01:18Show us this love that we already know from catechesis because if we know that God is love and we can read a lot about Corinthians 13 and we can know a lot about this, but man really has to experience that God loves him.
01:35And that gives her a different understanding of her relationship with God and obviously her relationship with the world and all the people we wouldn't have without her.
01:45It is therefore, on the one hand, a Christophany in which the Lord Jesus manifested himself in some way to Saul through a light that came from heaven.
01:58On the other hand, it was an illustration of the unity of the divine plan of salvation for humanity.
02:07The God who now reveals himself to his son, who is the creator God, Lord of history and faithful to the covenant with Israel, is the God whom Saul has always served, but who now manifests himself in a different and wonderful way.
02:28Now, in a moment, he understands that things he had only read about were past experiences, the history of his people; now that history comes to life within him.
02:42That God in whom he believed now manifests his love to him and fully reveals himself in this Trinitarian form that we all must also experience.
02:53If we truly want our lives to be oriented towards a secure relationship with God and to produce true conversion within us.
03:06We could say that in some way, within Paul, as it must be within us, the salvific value of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah was revealed to him.
03:19In God's plan, and provided him with a new vision of the history of salvation with the inauguration of the messianic era and the expectation of its ultimate fulfillment.
03:32This is what Pablo understands from a blow at the moment of that demonstration he has there in Damascus.
03:40The fact that the encounter with the resurrected Jesus Christ, the Messiah, in whom the prophecies are fulfilled, will leave him blind, outwardly shows his inner blindness to the truth of Christ.
03:54I have already made it clear in different ways that blindness in the gospels and in general in the New Testament is an external sign of a lack of faith, of being blind to the light of God.
04:08That is why only when Paul receives baptism does he regain his sight, fulfilling in him, physically, what has been theologically accomplished in baptism.
04:20In this regard, Benedict XVI points out in his general audience of September 3, 2008, that one can and should speak of a conversion, see.
04:34To see is to be converted.
04:38A converted person will see his wife, his children, and his work differently.
04:44He will see the economic relationship in a different way.
04:51Everything is transformed.
04:53We really started to see.
04:56And that's why this experience is important for Pablo.
05:00And it also has to be an experience within us.
05:03To be able to see.
05:05If we continue to see things the way we always have.
05:09If for us marriage is what it has always been.
05:13If our relationship with money has always been the same.
05:17If nothing has changed.
05:20So, oh, I come from a family where my conversion is already ingrained.
05:27It's something I grew up with.
05:29It's something I received directly from a very young age.
05:34Or I haven't converted.
05:36In other words, if there is no change, or if I am already converted and that is why I cannot see, no matter how much I continue to advance in my spiritual life, I cannot see things differently, then that means that my life is already converted.
05:53I am only progressing in understanding and depth.
05:56Or, if I see that in addition to taking classes and this Bible course and I don't know what other stories in church.
06:06And I don't see my wife, my children, my relationship with money, my relationship with my work, or society any differently.
06:14And it doesn't change, brother.
06:16You haven't converted.
06:17This light has not entered your life and you continue to see things as you have always seen them.
06:24And that's not conversion.
06:26We can say, without a doubt, that the encounter with Jesus Christ transforms his thinking and his life.
06:34This is the starting point of conversion, of the profound transformation that every man must undergo to live in the kingdom.
06:42Without this personal and transformative encounter, we cannot say that a Christian life truly exists.
06:53The proof is that man can now see.
06:57He does not see, because there is no conversion.
07:01That's the proof.
07:03If everything stays the same, then there is no conversion.
07:07A person sees things differently when they convert.
07:13I can tell you this.
07:15Anyone who has already experienced this personal encounter with Christ can tell you that.
07:22And I would like this to be a strong motivator for you.
07:26So that all this study that we are carrying out does not remain just mental things, mere erudition.
07:35But that it truly leads you to an encounter with Christ.
07:39And if you don't have it, if everything you've studied here with us hasn't provided it,
07:45Keep searching for it, go to your parish, look for a kerygma, open your heart, dedicate more time to your prayer.
07:52Ask the Lord for it.
07:53Lord, I want to know you, I want to know you inwardly.
07:57Tell him, I want to see all things renewed within me.
08:01This conversion is what leads us to a transformation in all areas of our lives.
08:10And this, obviously, is evident to everyone else.
08:14People are going to ask us, what happened to you?
08:16What happened in your life?
08:20You're not the same person I knew.
08:23And this is true the greater the distance in time,
08:26In other words, if I haven't seen someone for a week, maybe they won't notice.
08:31But if I haven't seen her for a month, two months, a year, three years,
08:34He'll say, you're a new, different person.
08:38I don't recognize you.
08:41There has been a conversion.
08:43And this happens precisely because of a dying process that leads me to a change.
08:51In other words, I die to certain things and am reborn to others.
08:55For Paul, everything related to Christ is connected to death.
09:02death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
09:06Not as concepts, but as a life experience.
09:11Paul has died with Christ, he has been buried with Him,
09:16and has been reborn, now being, by the power of the Holy Spirit, a new creation.
09:23We can say, to paraphrase Rodney Reeves,
09:27that in general men seek to learn how to live,
09:31while Jesus, in his Gospel, teaches us how to die.
09:36To die a little each day.
09:40Conversion is death.
09:42It is the death of that old man that gives rise to the new man.
09:48To die and be buried so that one can be resurrected from there.
09:53This radical change in the person makes one understand that everything in the world,
10:05if it is compared to Christ, and what the Christian life offers,
10:10is truly despicable.
10:13Let us listen to what the apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians.
10:17I invite you to look in your Bible, Philippians 3:8.
10:21We read the text that tells us,
10:26Everything I once considered valuable is now garbage.
10:33Brothers, this actually represents a death to everything that is not God.
10:40Things in themselves lose value, even though they are good.
10:46I can't say that my car is bad,
10:50or that having money is bad, or being married is bad.
10:53No.
10:53But they lose that dimension they previously had.
11:00And now everything changes.
11:02And it becomes entirely secondary, not to say despicable,
11:08but at least it is secondary.
11:10This leads the person to experience the true freedom of the children of God.
11:15I am no longer tied to that car, or that house, or that money, or anything.
11:20I live in the freedom of the children of God.
11:22God has everything, but in reality, one lives as if one has nothing.
11:29Therefore, Saint Paul invites the Corinthians to live this freedom.
11:34These Corinthians, as you may recall from when we discussed the topic of the Corinthians,
11:38because they lived in a port full of amenities,
11:42where life in Corinth was about going to Corinthian, about having a good time.
11:48It's no longer of interest.
11:50Now our perspective is God, our perspective is Christ.
11:55It is true that He already expected the end of times as something imminent.
12:01However, the reality is that he doesn't value anything that doesn't lead him to live with greater intimacy.
12:08with Christ, with whom He is crucified.
12:11He was crucified with Him, He died with Him, He was buried, He was laid to rest with Him, and He has been reborn.
12:23It has been a transformation in Christ.
12:26And that is why he writes to the Galatians one of the quotes that at least for me is truly very, very important.
12:35I would like us to read it together.
12:37It is Galatians 2:20.
12:39Let's go to our text.
12:41So this text tells us about the importance,
13:08the centrality of Christ in his life and how He died with him.
13:15And that's why, frankly, the things of this world no longer interest him.
13:20The only important thing, the only thing of value for Paul, will be to be united with Christ.
13:27And so, we stop our reflection here.
13:30We'll continue in a few moments.
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