Saint of the Day, January 25

On the road to Damascus, around the year 34, Saul of Tarsus — a brilliant Pharisee armed with letters to arrest the followers of Jesus — was thrown from his horse by a blinding light and heard the voice of the risen Christ: 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' Baptized three days later by the disciple Ananias, he became Paul, Apostle of the Gentiles. The Church keeps this conversion as a separate feast because it stands at the very heart of the Christian message: that grace can overtake the most determined enemy of the Gospel and remake him into its greatest missionary. Caravaggio's painting in Santa Maria del Popolo has fixed the moment in the Western imagination.