Ananias did not merely "make a statement" to Paul... He gave seeing to the eyes of Paul, and then he Baptized Paul into Christ...
Paul was headed for Damasus to seize, imprison, and kill this very same Ananias, yes? And any other troublemaking Christians he might find there, as he had already found proto-martyr Stephen... He was persecuting Christians, and what did the RISEN CHRIST ask him???
"Saul, Saul... Why are you persecuting ME?"
So that these Christians ARE Christ Himself... They are members of His Holy Body, and against them, the Gates of Hell itself shall not prevail, even as they did not against Stephen... This is the Great Mystery of the Church of Christ, where flesh and blood contend victoriously against the powers and forces of the evil one... Just as also did Christ Himself when He destroyed the power of death by His Ascent upon the Cross and died there, and plundered Hades...
Christ ascended in the flesh unto His Father in the Heavens, and at the same time left His Flesh upon the earth in His Body, the Church, where His Incarnation is perpetual and ongoing, and has been so for 2000 years and still counting...
So that the first century Christian Jews ARE the Body of Christ, and it is they who healed Paul, and baptized him into Christ to become one with them... And though Paul did indeed receive an abundance of revelations from the Lord, and the big one on the road to Damascus, you may have noticed that he did not preach from any of them, but instead only preached "Christ, and Him Crucified"... And this means that Paul preached suffering unto death, and the higher one ascends in Christ, the greater one's sufferings, and those called to be Apostles to suffer the most, "as appointed unto death", which he entreats ALL the members of the Ekklesia that they "become as I am"... eg As one with Apostolic suffering and gifts...
And indeed, Christ told Ananias that He wished to show Paul "how much he must suffer for My Name's sake", remember?
So that to follow Paul, as Paul followed Christ, imitating both, one must follow them in their suffering, and it was this suffering that was what Ananias baptized Saul into, after restoring to him his sight, and indeed, giving him sight which he previously did not have, for as it were scales came forth from out of his eyes, as his sight returned, and he looked up into the beauty of the eyes of Ananias, as into the Beauty of our Lord Himself...
And yes, we do this even unto this very day and hour...
We who IMITATE Paul, even as Paul IMITATED Christ, is sufferings and sorrows... And we even name Churches after Paul - One of which is on Geary St. in San Francisco, whose Name is: "The JOY OF ALL WHO SORROW."
If you are not suffering, you are neither imitating nor obeying Christ, nor are you living a Christian Live, where the witness is in Blood, and the Greek word for witness is martyr...
Arsenios