CONVERSION

Jesus said to me, “What do you want me to do for you?” As a blind man I said to him, “My teacher… let me see again.”

God wants me to see the light. He wants me to be healed. He wants me to be converted. He calls me to be his disciple and he calls me to be holy. In this paper, I would like to present “conversion” as a response to the call of discipleship and call of holy life and to respond to it joyfully.

Conversion is not that easy. It is painful to leave the old ways behind. But by His love and grace I can move myself to struggle for conversion - to turn away from sin, to commit myself to God, and to be a living witness and reach out to people and call them to conversion.

God is calling me and He is reaching out to me. “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.” (Matthew 3:4) Conversion will be my response.

Conversion is our “turning toward” God who is always turning toward us. Conversion begins with repentance. The call to repentance is invitation to freedom and preparation for faith. Repentance is the turning from (sin and guilt) and faith is the turning to (seeing Jesus). Our faith in Christ can serve as the foundation for the Christian way of life, a basis for Christian conversion.[1]

It is my vocation to surrender myself and all the aspect of my life to God. In my experience of conversion, I must become, first of all, a disciple of Jesus Christ. Secondly, I must be awakened to awareness, to be aware of myself and the presence of God in my life just like Isaiah, Peter and Paul in the Bible. Lastly, I must make my fundamental decisions in my life.

Conversion is, in the language of Charles Curran, “the central moral message of Jesus”[2] and the foundational experience of the Christian way of life.[3] A Christian is a person who has moved to a different level of human consciousness in response to the call of Jesus. The Christian is one who accepts Jesus’ call to discipleship and whose whole life is shaped by that call.

To be a disciple is to be on the way to full conversion.[4] The way of discipleship is the way of the imitation of Christ (John 13:15), to have his “attitudes” as St. Paul says - “make your own the mind of Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). The disciple was to act as Jesus himself: with compassion, humility, generosity, and suffering service to others. That is, to make Jesus’ way of life my own as a Christian.

Conversion is the foundational experience of the Christian life and of Christian morals. Jesus Christ is the norm of the moral life[5] and we look to him as the model of the sort of persons we ought to become.[6]

In the Bible, the Greek word metanoia suggests a “change of heart”, a turning away from our former consciousness, now we recognized as wrong, and striking out in a completely a new life, new horizon, new direction.

The foundational experience of conversion can be seen in the people in the Bible who encounter the living God, who awakened to a consciousness of God’s presence in their lives. Some examples of the biblical individuals are Isaiah, Peter and Paul.

1. The experience of Isaiah in his prophetic calling (Isa. 6:1-13) evokes himself to awaken himself to a consciousness of his wretched condition.

2. The miraculous catch of fish awakened Peter’s consciousness to the presence of God in the person of Jesus (Lk. 5:1-11).

3. The conversion of Paul (Acts 9:1-19) has the same structure of experience of Isaiah and Peter.

These examples are the basic structure of experience. This experience with God points us to the meaning of conversion - the awareness of one self and the awareness of the holiness of God.

The example of Isaiah, Peter and Paul in their conversion experience reminding me the call to discipleship, that is, to strive to enter the reign of God. I can only embrace it by the “awareness”, as Anthony de Mello put it, of my true self and of my God.

“If you wish to be perfect… then, come and follow me.” (Mt 19:21) This is the fundamental call of Jesus to the young man. To this call the disciple must respond with a radical decision and choice. It is the same decision of Isaiah, of Peter and of Paul.

To be converted to Christ is to respond the fundamental call of Jesus. To be converted is to adopt a whole new basic Christian orientation, what moral theologian Bernard Häring, C.Ss.R. calls the “Fundamental Option”.[7] For Pope John Paul II, this “decision of faith” is an instance of a fundamental option.[8]

Conversion is my choice. To enter into a Marist life and to live the religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience is a radical decision and a radical commitment. This choice is deeply rooted in the deep knowledge of myself and a freedom to commit for it. By this fundamental choice, I will be able to give direction to my life, with the help of His grace, to follow His call.

There is something God wants me to be. There is something God calls me to be. Repentance and faith is not enough. They are both meaningless and impossible without the call to holiness.

Holiness of life is so abstract. We can make it concrete when we internalize it in our daily life – in our own story, in our community and in our prayer and worship – which our conversion is always implies.

I love to listen to the stories. I love to tell my own stories. My willingness to transform and to allow myself to be changed is shaped by the story.

The Christian story is the story of Jesus and of his people. The basis of conversion is to listen to this story. In listening to the Gospel story we discover our life as wonder and as the gift of God’s love.

At the heart of all the great stories of the scripture is God’s love calling us to conversion, like a prodigal son (Luke 15:32). At the heart of the doctrine of the Church is the one message of God’s love in Christ through the Holy Spirit, to sanctify the Church.

I am called to enter into this story and make it my own. Through making my story meaningful, I will be changed and formed and become a person with a capacity for life-giving relationships and self-determination.

I learn about Christ by following Christ. I believe I learn about Him by following Him where He lives today – in a community of faith.

Christian community reminds us that Christian conversion demand Church membership. God’s call means that one is called to join the Church. Christian conversion recognizes that we become the children of God, a community of the faithful. As the Church, as a moral community, we are called to serve to belong and to serve.

As a converted Christian, I have a responsibility to and for the community and living out my commitments to communicate, to reconcile and to work for peace and justice.

Conversion is discovering and celebrating God’s presence and love in the Liturgy. The most powerful experience of God’s presence in the community is in the Sacraments of the Church.

As I read the letter of Pope John Paul II in his Ecclesia de Eucharistia, I was inspired by his words as he shared his own testimony of faith in the Most Holy Eucharist with deep emotion. He said, “Every commitment to holiness… must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery… We, the children of the Church, are called to undertake with renewed enthusiasm the journey of Christian living”.[9] I would say it is the statement of conversion and a call to live a Christian way of life, a holy life.

As a Catholic, a sign that I am entering more deeply into the understanding of conversion is that I am able to celebrate a new life in Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

Joyful conversion of the heart is, as Charles Curran notes, “the central moral message of Jesus.” By conversion, our hostility to God is freely changed. This act of freedom is our fundamental decision to convert from sin.

However, conversion is a lifelong process.[10] Conversion is the ongoing response of our whole being turning in faith in the amazing grace of God’s love. We need God’s grace in the process of conversion. It is the gift of grace that flooding our hearts through the Holy Spirit. We need to cooperate joyfully to the grace of God to make our conversion effective.

To become a disciple, a person converted in Christ, I must remain in His love and to follow Him.[11] To follow Him is a constant call and if I wish to follow Him, I must deny myself and take up my cross everyday.[12] That is not an easy task. Conversion is not just for a day but for the rest of my life – a total self-surrender without conditions, qualifications and reservation.

“I am crucified with Christ, therefore I no longer live. Jesus Christ now lives in me.”[13] That is the true conversion experience for St. Paul. Conversion comes through learning who Jesus is. Conversion experience comes from God who is Love.[14]

Once I know God, that is, once I experience his love, I can only desire one thing: to be in that Love. I will be transform by Love. A disciple was always be marked by that love[15] in particular love for one another. The converted person knows that love and from that place everything matters:

· To listen to God’s call – to be a disciple, to be aware of Self and God, to have a fundamental option;

· To be holy - listen to the story, to live in the community of the faithful, to pray and celebrate life in liturgy;

· To be joyful – to let the grace of God transforms our lives as we continue to strive for conversion.

We, as Christians, we need to be converted, to be the living witnesses of that Love. One thing for sure, conversion is not just for the individual, but it is collective. Our world needs to be converted. We can invite them into conversion. Our need and the need of our society is for the consciousness of conversion – to denounce oppression, human rights violation, injustices and summary execution.

Conversion means to surrender ourselves to God is every aspect of our lives,[16] not just personal but social, not just spiritual but economics, not just psychological but political.

[1] Jim Wallis, Call to Conversion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 1-17.

[2] Charles E. Curran, “Conversion: The Central Moral Message of Jesus”, A New Look at Christian Morality (Notre Dame: Fides, 1970), 25-71.

[3] Rodulf Schnackenburg, The Moral Teaching of the New Testament (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 15-53.

[4] Richard M. Gula, S.S., Reason Informed by Faith: Foundations of Catholic Morality (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 196-197.

[5] Gula, 185

[6] Gula, 185

[7] Bernard Häring, C.Ss.R., Free and Faithful in Christ vol. 1, 168-167.

[8] Cf. Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 65-70.

[9] See Ecclesia de Eucharistia, no. 59

[10] David J. O’Brien, Catholicism 2^nd Edition (Great Britain: Geoffrey Chapman, 2000), 924.

[11] See John 15:11

[12] See Mark 8:34

[13] See Gal. 2:19-20

[14] See 1 John 4:7-21

[15] See John 13:34-35

[16] Cf. Wallis, 1-17.