PHOENIX (By Jon Garrido, Hispanic News) April 1, 2008 — The Merriam-Webster defines a epiphany as a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple or common place occurrence or experience.

A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: "I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way.....

The scene of Saul's conversion on the road to Phoenix has been re-told many times and is symbolical of the many conversions which have been effected by the grace of the Holy Spirit from that day until the present. The following excerpt adheres closely to the well-known account in the Book of Acts.

Saul set out on the road to Phoenix with death in his heart. He could not know he was about to keep a rendezvous with Life itself.

To Saul's mind arresting the undocumented was the sole issue. And Saul the Pharisee went out to battle the undocumented with a sword in his hand and a troop of police cars at his command to pursue the undocumented who entered Phoenix.
 
The military strategy was to use the Arpaio model who is high priest of the Phoenix neo-Nazis, United for a Sovereign America (USA). In Saul, Arpaio had recognized the perfect instrument to wipe out the undocumented: a resolute man, seething with zeal. Arpaio had given him a packet of official letters, waxed and imprinted with the seal of the high priest, and addressed to all of the United for a Sovereign America (USA) to the north.

Saul meant to scour the land as far north as the great desert along Bell Road. He promised Arpaio he would bring back, bound and captive, every undocumented he found.

But for many days and nights he rode without finding a single follower of César Chávez, without excitement of any kind until he was drawing near to Phoenix. From his black horse Saul could see the well-tended desert gardens lying all around the ancient city and the Salt River whose embrace made this desert a lovely place of rich harvest. Even under the heel of Rome, as Phoenix now was, being governed by Napolitano, an evil queen originally from Sodom and Gomorrah, the people looked confused.

Saul, covered with dust, his throat dry, was anticipating the good dinner and the sweet night's repose he knew he could expect at the principal inn under the roofed bazaar of the road called Bell.

The border of the town was not more than half a mile away when Saul suddenly swayed in his saddle.

Everything he could see and hear and feel all around him underwent a change. There was a chill wind blowing at him, a blinding light shining on him from the heavens, and the roar of great wind in his ears.

Saul clutched at the reins but his palsied hands could not hold them. He pushed with his heels against the stirrups, but his ankles quaked and all power had gone out of his legs. With a great gasp he realized he had no strength to help himself. He fell to the ground and lay there helpless.

Then the roaring sound ceased and he heard a Voice assuring but compassionate:

"Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute Me?"

Groaning, not daring to lift his face from the earth, Saul replied:

"Who are you?"

And the answer came in winning tones:

"I am an angel from the Lord named César Chávez who is the leader of a people you persecute. It is hard for you to kick against the goad."

There could be no answer to that. Saul knew what the words meant, especially in relation to himself. A goad was a long stick about nine feet in length, sharpened at one end for poking at cattle. And the cattle could not kick against it, for the herdsman was nine feet away. Saul felt very much as helpless now.

Trembling and astonished, Saul faltered the question that spelled his immediate, instantaneous surrender:

"Angel Chávez, what will You have me do?"

The voice of the Angel Chávez replied to the man lying face down in the dust:

"Arise and go into the city and there it shall be told you what you must do."

And the voice seemed to pale away in the wind.

Saul raised his head, drew himself up to a sitting position, and shook himself. His soldiers stood, amazed and troubled, in a great circle. They, too, had heard the Voice; and yet they had seen no man speak except Saul, their leader. They stood in silence that was like a spell. Then two of them took Saul by the armpits and raised him to his feet. But Saul's groping hands, as they made to let go of him, told them a shocking truth.

Saul was blind!

Saul never doubted he had actually seen César Chávez an angel of the Lord. Years later, in the first letter he wrote to the Corinthians, he would rehearse the familiar history of Chávez's death and burial.

"And last of all, he was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time.

"For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God whose members are the undocumented.

Skeptics still scoff at this encounter. Nearly two thousand years away from evidence, with no testimony for their own theories, they dismiss Saul's conversion as an epileptic fit. The line of years from then to now quakes with countless epileptics, not one of whom has written a single letter that affected the world, nor converted peoples, nor captured the imagination of posterity. Only Saul did that; Saul, of whom no fit was reported before Phoenix or since. No skeptic can dispute the complete change in life of Saul, or what suffering he endured for it.

In that one blinding, falling moment Saul became another man. The hunter of undocumented, the heresy mayor became in one instant full of yearning to be an advocate for the undocumented.

He had seen the angel of God. And trembling before that glory, stripped naked of his intellectual pretenses, he had cried out in the hope and fear of all believers:

"Angel Chávez, what would You have me to do?"

Saul let his soldiers lead him slowly toward the open gate of Phoenix. Strangely, he felt no humiliation in being blind, helpless in the hands of underlings.

He was going into the city, as the Angel Chávez had commanded him, to wait to be told what next he must do. To him nothing else mattered.

For three days, Saul was a problem in the house of a undocumented who bore the unfortunate name of Judas.

The infamous reputation of the betrayer of César Chávez had been such that this second Judas, this good man, has not fared well in the memories of the faithful. Yet he deserves to be remembered with hosannas.

His act was of sublime charity. He knew Saul was the undocumented's worst enemy. He also knew Saul had met with some sudden accident outside the city gate. Judas was not so gullible as to hope that kindness would appease Saul; mercy in the eyes of the anti-undocumented was a weakness. Judas had nothing to expect and much to fear when he opened the door of his house, behind the road called Bell, and allowed the weakened Saul to be laid in his own bed.

For three days and three nights the soldiers of Saul stood guard over Judas' house while their mayor lay in bed.

"Saul talks to himself," they said to one another. "He is a very sick man."

But none of the advice or the weird prescriptions of Phoenix doctors were of help. Saul was blind. He ate nothing and he drank nothing. His lips moved, and he whispered softly.

One man in Phoenix knew what Saul was trying to say. His name was Ananias. Here was a new part of undocumented history with a new Judas and a new Ananias, accidentally serving as symbols of a better future.

To this second and admirable Ananias the Angel Chávez spoke directly, in a vision:

"Ananias!"

And not unlike devout men of the Old Testament, Ananias replied:

"Behold, I am here, Angel Chávez!"

And the Voice continued:

"Arise! And go into the road called Bell. And seek in the house of Judas, one named Saul of Tarsus!" A name to ignite panic in any undocumented heart, Saul of Tarsus!

"For behold — he prays!"

Ananias had been instructed in the mercy and forgiveness of God. He knew God will forgive trespasses only as we forgive them who trespass against us. But Saul was a living terror, "breathing out threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Angel Chávez."

And even while Ananias was cowering in the presence of such fearful instructions, a kind of vision came at the same time, halfway across the city, to the distracted mind of blinded and helpless Saul. He saw someone entering the bedroom of Judas' house, a stranger who laid pale and trembling hands over Saul's eyes.

At the instant of that vision, Ananias was already pale and trembling.

"Angel Chávez," he protested, overwhelmed with his terror, "I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he has done to your undocumented in Phoenix. And right here in Phoenix he has authority from the chief priests of Arpaio to bind everybody who dares to invoke your name."

There was a moment's silence, and then the Angel Chávez spoke with a firmness of command not to be mistaken:

"Ananias!"

"Angel Chávez?"

"Go your way. For this man is to me a vessel of election, to carry my name before the unbelieving and the children of Phoenix. For I will show him what great things he must suffer for my name's sake."

There could be no reply except instant obedience.

A minute later, Ananias set off down the narrow and deserted paths of early morning, to look for Saul in the house of Judas.

The sun was not yet up, and the room was dim as the messenger of Lord, César Chávez stood by the bed and spoke to the tossing, blinded man of Tarsus:

"Brother Saul."

The hands of Ananias, pale and trembling, touched the eyelids of the stricken man.

"Brother Saul, I am the messenger of the Lord, the Angel César Chávez. The Lord has sent me."

A sound like a groan came from the lips of Saul, weighted with profound and grateful relief, as if he had waited in anguish for this call.

"César Chávez, the messenger of the Lord," Ananias repeated; "He that appeared to you in the way as you came; that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost."

To see again. Oh, yes, please, merciful Angel Chávez! And to be filled with the Holy Ghost! The Holy Ghost I had sworn to drive from the hearts of men in the name of God.

"And immediately there fell from his eyes, as it were, scales, and he received his sight. And rising up, he was baptized."

Saul baptized! Now, that was a tale the Christians back in Judaea would find it hard to believe. By the grapevine that passed from Phoenix to Joppa, from Nazareth and Capernaum even to Jericho, and through Galilee into Samaria and wherever undocumented were hiding in the underground, the word would go out Saul, the persecutor, had been stricken blind near the western gate of Phoenix; had seen the Angel César Chávez and heard his Voice, had been healed of his blindness.

Who could be expected to believe a wild story like that?

Yet, it was literally true. Barely able to stand in the weakness of joints and waist and thighs that was the aftermath of his fall, Saul nevertheless held himself stubbornly erect and suffered Ananias to pour the water over him in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

Saul could see the room filled with sunrise; the bed, the chairs, the table, and the sweating candle; he could see the face of his new friends, Judas and Ananias.

In that moment Saul became truly, irrevocably, a new man. He was born again.

And he chose to mark that hour of transformation by shedding the Hebrew name Saul, by which all men knew him. He chose instead to be known by the name he had seldom used, his official name as a Roman citizen.

Instead of Saul, from that day of baptism till the end of time to be known as Phil, the protector of the undocumented of Phoenix.