You heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I persecuted the Church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And I was unknown personally to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only kept hearing that “the one who once was persecuting us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” So they glorified God because of me. (Gal 1:13-24)
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/100824.cfm
As Oscar Wilde once observed, “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” Saint Paul recounts his past to the Galatians to remind them that there is hope for us yet, that everyone has a future, that there is nothing in our past that God can’t use to spread the Kingdom.
These reflections are a result of more than 40 years of ministry as a Roman Catholic priest. Most of these years I spent in the Diocese of Charlotte which covers Western North Carolina. Now I am retired, and live in Medellín, Colombia where I continue to serve as a priest in the Archdiocese of Medellín.
Tuesday, Week XXVII, Ordinary Time
