Continuing conversion

WE have to understand that conversion is a continuing affair for all of us in this life. We can never say, if we have to follow by what our Christian faith tells us, that we are good enough as to need conversion no more.

            We are all sinners, St. John said. And even the just man, as the Bible said, falls seven times in a day.

            Besides, it is this sense of continuing conversion that would really ensure us that whatever we do, whatever would happen to us, including our failures and defeats, would redound to what is truly good for the parties concerned and for everybody else in general.

            That’s because conversion brings us and everything that we have done in life to a reconciliation with God, from whom we come and to whom we go.

            In one of the post-resurrection appearances of Christ to his apostles, that time when it was said that Christ “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,” our Lord told them clearly:

            “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Lk 24,46-47)

            Yes, repentance for the forgiveness of sins has to be preached far and wide and constantly. These words show how much Christ is bent in saving us, in bringing us to our true dignity of a functioning child of God. This is his will for us. We just have to learn to correspond to that will, which is actually for our own true good.

            And so, before we dismiss these words as one of those we would immediately react as to be heard or considered at some other time, I feel that precisely that time has come, since we see around us abundant signs of people lulled and locked in a gripping state of self-satisfaction, complacency, lukewarmness, if not self-righteousness.

            I refer more to people who have been doing good all these years, but somehow are stuck at a certain point in their spiritual life. Doing good for them has become a kind of set routine that is turning to be more mechanical than spiritual, leaving an impressive shell but slowly being deprived of substance.

            This is where conversion is most urgently needed, because the tendency is precisely to think that we don’t need conversion anymore. It would seem that the “itch” for conversion has vanished.

            The mark of true saints is precisely this hunger and thirst for repentance and conversion. Whatever good they did humbled them instead of leaving them proud. They knew who and what was behind all the accomplishments they made, and were more keenly aware of their inadequacies, their mistakes, faults, infidelities, etc.

            It’s not that they led a miserable life of having a dark outlook in life and a negative attitude toward their own selves. They were a happy lot, whose joy sprang from their living and faithful union with God, their father, but aware of their total dependence on God.

            It’s their driving love for God and souls that keep them feeling always the need for penance and conversion. It’s not just fear of sin and evil that provokes this hunger. It’s love of God and souls. It’s this love that made them see more things that they need to do.

            Due to this love, they also sharply knew that on their own, all they could do is evil, not good. St. Augustine said something to this effect. We are actually nothing without God.

            Our problem is that we often think that we can do good by our own selves, without the grace of God. We think that with our talents and good will alone, we can be and do good independently of God.

            We easily forget the fact that all our talents and our capacity to have good will all come from God. Our problem is that we usurp the goodness and power of God, and make them simply as our own. This anomaly, done at the very fundamental level of our life, would have tremendous repercussions in all the other aspects of our life.

            This is something we should try to avoid. I know it’s easy for us to fall to that predicament, and that’s precisely why we need to have continuing repentance and conversion. We should not go to bed at night without expressing some penance and reconciling ourselves with our Lord. We have to end the day always reunited with God.