The Call of the Apostle Paul

And when Christ in his own person called Paul and spoke to him, he could have opened to him at once the way of perfection. Yet he chose instead to direct him to Ananias, and commanded him to learn the way of truth from him, saying: “Arise and go into the city, and there you will be told what you ought to do.” So he sends him to an older man, and sees fit to have him instructed by that man’s teaching rather than his own. Otherwise what might rightly have been done in Paul’s case might set a bad example of self-sufficiency, if each person were to persuade himself that he too ought to be trained in the same way by the guidance and teaching of God alone, rather than by the instruction of the elders. And the apostle himself teaches, not only by his letters but by his acts and deeds, that this self-sufficiency must be avoided with all possible care. For he says that he went up to Jerusalem for this reason alone: to share, in a private and informal conference with his fellow apostles and with those who were before him, the gospel he was preaching to the Gentiles, while the grace of the Holy Spirit was accompanying him with powerful signs and wonders. As he says: “And I laid before them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, lest perhaps I had run, or should run, in vain.” Who, then, is so self-sufficient and blind as to dare to trust his own judgment and discernment, when the chosen vessel confesses that he needed to confer with his fellow apostles? From this we clearly see that the Lord does not himself show the way of perfection to anyone who has the opportunity of learning and yet despises the teaching and training of the elders, paying no attention to that saying which ought to be most carefully kept: “Ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you.” [a]