While on his way to exterminate Christians, St. Paul was delayed on the road to Damascus. He “saw the light”.
That light was of such a unique intensity that it was able to go through his eye, down his optic nerve, and beam into his brain with enough strength to alter the countless billions of bits of light that had arranged themselves in a pattern that prompted him to destroy Christianity.
We are not that bright. Our attempts at telling our neighbors that they have souls and should try to save them rarely have such an effect.
St. Paul went temporarily blind. The light was of such intensity that it erased much of the light structures stored in his mind. It was an individual and far more complicated version of the Moslems burning the Great Library at Alexandria. In that process, light destroyed patterns of light recorded in acres of scrolls.
When St. Paul “saw the light”, it erased the light patterns carefully stored and arranged in his own mind. Suddenly, the most fervent Jew became the most enthusiastic Christian.
That’s why we should love our enemies. Our worst enemies merely have the misfortune to have disordered thoughts in their minds. Those thoughts lead them, like St. Paul, to murder their enemies. Those thoughts can also be changed. Enemies can become brothers, as Paul and Peter.
Disordered thoughts are those without love. Disordered thoughts exist because demons pile up bits of light in distorted, twisted ways in human minds. As the disorder becomes habitual, it is ever harder to see that the light of the world is love.
