Paul or Cornelius: Who's Conversion do You Prefer?

Mr Keating is the founder of Catholic Answers-

KARL KEATING’S E-LETTER

September 23, 2008

TOPIC: Owing More to Cornelius Than to Paul

Dear Subscriber:

Whose conversion to Christianity was more important, that of Paul or that of Cornelius? “Why, Paul’s, of course,” you say. After all, who talks about Cornelius nowadays? Paul gets all the press—and for a good reason.

But let’s think this through. I believe one can argue that Cornelius’s conversion was the more important. Let me explain by turning to Luke’s Gospel, chapters 9 and 10, and looking at what happened to each man.

First of all, each had a vision, Paul having perhaps history’s most famous as he was on the road to Damascus. A light flashed around him, and he was knocked to the ground (whether from his feet or, as in traditional artwork, from a horse we don’t know). He heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” The voice was Jesus’. Saul, now blind, was told to go into Damascus and to await further instructions. Meanwhile, in Damascus a man named Ananias had a vision, the Lord telling him to restore Paul’s sight and to baptize him.

Now let’s switch to Cornelius. He lived in Caesarea and was a Roman soldier—in fact, an officer commanding a century, which was a subdivision of a Roman legion. One afternoon Cornelius had a vision of an angel. The vision at first terrified him (an unsurprising response, I would think). The angel told Cornelius to send men to Joppa and to have them bring Peter to Caesarea. The phrasing indicates that Cornelius did not know who Peter was, but he obeyed at once, sending one of his trusted soldiers and two of his personal servants.

While the three were on their way to Joppa the next day, Peter himself had a vision, the one in which a giant sheet contained all sorts of animals, clean and unclean. In the vision Peter was told to eat the animals, but he protested against eating the unclean ones. The voice told him that it was God, not Peter, who would determine what was clean and what wasn’t. After the vision concluded, Peter sat thinking about it, and just then the men sent by Cornelius showed up. The next day Peter set off with them for Caesarea.

At the house of Cornelius Peter gave an address, and, as he ended, “the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word,” with graces coming even to the Gentiles. Peter asked, “Can anyone forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” Then the Gentiles—Cornelius included—were baptized.

Later Peter reported on these events to the other apostles, and they said, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life.” (Keep in mind that Jesus had neither baptized nor authorized the baptism of Gentiles; the apostles here accepted Peter’s determination of what should be done.)

Let’s summarize. Paul and Cornelius received visions that resulted in their conversions. Paul was baptized by Ananias, a man of such little importance that he disappeared from Christian history, as though he had only a walk-on part. Cornelius, by contrast, was baptized by the first pope. Paul was brought into the Church in order to bring others in; he would become the first great missionary. What later became of Cornelius is unclear, but he and those with him were the first non-Jews to become Christians, which means that he was the prototype for most of us.

Which conversion was the more important—the one that opened the faith to the large majority of mankind (everyone who was not a Jew) or the one of the man who would begin the task of bringing in those people?

Fr. Vincent McNabb put it this way eighty years ago, “Paul’s conversion prepared the worker for the harvest; the call of Cornelius prepared the harvest-field for the worker.” While Paul’s conversion was “fateful for the Church, [it] was not so fateful as that of the centurion who, when he entered the flock of Christ, brought with him the world of Gentiles.”

This is not to say that Cornelius ended up the greater saint, of course, but it does suggest that we may profit from looking at biblical events in slightly different ways.

Until next time,

Karl