https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=QtJ4ym9Gju0
So Adam Shillard, always faithful to the call to ask a question, he says, “‘Hi, Jonathan, is the story of Balam and the donkey the same pattern as the conversion of St. Paul?’ That’s a really great question and a very good intuition. I think that the story of the conversion of St. Paul is definitely referring back to the story of Balam and the donkey, that is for certain. I think that it’s clearly in relationship to that story. Now, I would say that just as St. Paul, it’s a St. Paul story. St. Paul is always, how can I say this? St. Paul always has, I talk about this idea that he is kind of like a rectification of the left hand or something like that, where so many aspects of him, the fact that he says that he’s a fool for Christ, that he says that he’s a shapeshifter, talks about being all things to all men, he boasts of his weaknesses, and he talks about grace as well, this idea of this, a kind of, grace has to do to a certain extent with a breakdown in normal causality, you could say. And so, or the idea of mercy, you could say, has to do with the breakdown of normal causality. And so it seems like St. Paul, a lot of the stories, even his shipwreck seems to be in relationship to the story of Jonah, but it always changes discourse, it changes direction. So it refers back to the story of Jonah, this refers to the story of Balam, but instead of Balam being a kind of this evil magician that ultimately ends up prophesying in favor of God, despite himself, you could say that it’s something like that for Paul too, where he’s against Christ and he’s fighting Christ. And so as he goes back, he has this experience relating to falling off the donkey and also becoming blind. But then for him, it becomes a kind of mystical vision in the sense that it’s like it’s his first, it’s a transformation of this kind of silly, crazy story of Balam into something glorious, which participates in his sanctification. So it turns him into the apostle that he’s going to become. So yes, I totally agree that it refers to, but I don’t think it’s exactly the same. I think that it, just like everything about St. Paul, it kind of shifts, because it shifts, it’s like he makes the story shift in a direction that is different. All right, that’s as good as it’s gonna get.