In his letter to the church in Galatia St. Paul reported on his conversion experience. This was a major event in the life of the Church — so important that St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles tells the story three times, with slightly varying details. St. Paul doesn’t dwell on the event itself but rather on how he responded to it. “I went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas,” that is, St. Peter. In other words, his time in formation as a Christian was not among the early Jewish Christians but among gentiles. God used Paul’s experience, as God uses our own, to shape his understanding of the gospel life.
