Feast of Clare of Assisi
Father Richard explores how Paul’s mystical encounter with the risen Christ led him to embrace paradoxical thinking.
Meeting the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus changed everything for Paul. He experienced the great paradox that the crucified Jesus was in fact alive! And he, Paul, a “sinner,” was in fact chosen and beloved. This pushed Paul from the usual either/or dualistic thinking to both/and mystical thinking.
The truth in paradoxical language lies neither in the affirmation nor in the denial of either side, but precisely in the resolution of the tug-of-war between the two. The human mind usually works on the logical principle of contradiction, according to which something cannot be both true and false at the same time. Yet that is exactly what higher truths invariably undo (for example, God is both one and three; Jesus is both human and divine; bread and wine are both matter and Spirit). Unfortunately, since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, educated Western people like myself have lost touch with paradoxical, mystical, contemplative thinking. We’ve wasted at least five centuries taking sides—which is so evident in our culture today!
Not only was Paul’s way of thinking changed by his mystical experience, his way of being in the world was also transformed. Suddenly this persecutor—and possibly murderer—of Christians is Christ’s “chosen vessel,” sent “to carry my name before the gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” (Acts 9:15). This dissolves the strict line between good and bad, between in-group “Jews” and out-group “gentiles.” The paradox has been overcome in Paul’s very person. He now knows that he is both sinner and saint, and we too must trust the same. These two seeming contradictions don’t cancel one another. Once the conflict has been overcome in ourselves, we realize we are each a living paradox and so is everyone else. We begin to see life in a truly spiritual way.
Perhaps this is why Paul loves to teach dialectically. He presents two seemingly opposing ideas, such as weakness and strength, flesh and spirit, law and grace, faith and works, Jew and Greek, male and female. Dualistic thinking usually takes one side, dismisses the other, and stops there. Paul doesn’t do that. He forces us onto the horns of the dilemma and invites us to wrestle with the paradox. If we stay with him in the full struggle, we’ll realize that he eventually brings reconciliation on a higher level, beyond the essential struggle where almost all of us start. [1]
Paul is the first clear successor to Jesus as a nondual teacher. He creates the mystical foundations for Christianity. It’s a mystery of participation in Christ. It’s not something that we achieve by performance. It’s something that we’re already participating in, and often we just don’t know it. We are all already flowing in this Christ consciousness, this Trinitarian flow of life and love moving in and around and through everything; we just don’t realize it. [2]
References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, A New Way of Seeing … a New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul (Center for Action and Contemplation, 2007). Available as MP3 audio download.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, St. Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic (Center for Action and Contemplation, 2014). Available as MP3 audio download.
Image credit and inspiration: mohammad hassan taheri, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The fluid, impermanent sand slipped through Paul’s once-certain grasp, as his Divine encounter cracked open his clenched knowing and invited him to see from a transformed perspective.
Story from Our Community:
I had an experience of being close to death that offered me a glimpse of our deepest spiritual truth. In July 2022, I had a major heart attack without any prior symptoms. Through that experience, I saw briefly the truth that we are both nothing and everything. When we consider our own death, we are at our most vulnerable, our barest self—a mirror of how we are at our birth. We become our very core, nothing and everything. The rocks are me, the soil is me, the trees are me, the air is me. Me is us. We are one.
—Paul S.
