Saint Paul warns us in today's Epistle: “Receive not the grace of God in vain.” How should we understand this? How is it possible to receive the grace of God in vain? Isn’t God’s grace irresistible?

The idea that God’s grace is irresistible is neither biblical nor in accordance with the teaching of the Church, and leads to the Calvinist heresy of double predestination, according to which God has predestined some people to salvation and others to damnation. The Church, on the other hand, teaches that the grace of God is preventive: it precedes our faith and leads us to conversion and justification, but we are also capable of hardening our hearts and resisting the call of God’s grace, because God awaits our free response to His grace and love.

God doesn’t save anyone by force. Today’s Gospel tells of a blind man who begs Jesus to have mercy on him. Before Jesus heals this man, He asks him: “What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?” And the man regains his sight after Jesus says to him, “Thy faith hath saved thee!“

Our Lord speaks of the Word of God as a seed that is sown in the heart of man. God wants His word to bear fruit in us – eternal fruit that does not perish. Such fruit can only grow in a good heart, and for the heart to be good, it is necessary to prepare it in the right way.

The Church recommends to us, especially during Lent, three means to prepare our hearts to receive the Word of God so that it may bear abundant fruit in us. These three means are penance, mortification, and resolutions.

It is important to remember that we cannot buy God's mercy through acts of mercy – the Lord of the vineyard rewards everyone exactly as He wants, and we can be grateful that He does so out of goodness and love. However, it is necessary for us to practice works of mercy, because it is our chance to truly live in God’s mercy and grace. This is what we are called for, whether in the first hour or the last.

Paul’s conversion was a divine act, but this doesn’t mean that God did not use His servants in it. There were two people whose role in the life and fate of Paul was decisive: the already mentioned Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, and a disciple living in Damascus named Ananias. Interestingly, Saint Ananias, who later also died a martyr, is commemorated on the same day that we celebrate the Conversion of Saint Paul.