After a torrential rainstorm, a priest and a rabbi are standing next to the road with a sign that read: “The end is near!” Not too much later, a big pickup truck comes roaring by. They start waving the sign excitedly. As the truck passes by, the driver yells out, “You stupid religious nuts! Go home!” And he careens around the bend. Three seconds later, there is the sound of screeching tires and then a big splash.
The rabbi turns to the priest and says, “Do you think we should have written, ‘The bridge is down!’?”
As I promised last week, we see the Sunday readings taking a decidedly eschatological turn. That is, we are invited to contemplate the “last things” that will occur at the “eschaton” – the end of the age when Christ will come again in glory, the world as we know it will come to an end, and all things will be fulfilled in the person of Christ. Given the scale of the transformation, it is a bit scary in one sense, but also very exciting in another.
The disconcerting thing is that we don’t know when it will happen. Thus, we need to be vigilant. On the first Sunday of Advent we will hear Jesus say, “Be watchful! Stay awake! You do not know the hour when the Son of Man is coming.” (Mt. 25:13) In the meantime, we need to get our lives in order. We need to experience conversion.
So let us look at the idea of conversion. There are things I would like to emphasize this week:
- Conversion involves the whole person
- It takes time. It is a process.
Conversion involves the whole person, intellectually/emotionally, physically, and spiritually. These three aspects of mind, body and spirit are the essential components of our humanity. They are like a three-legged stool. We are at our best when all three are in balance. They are the three components of any authentic experience of conversion.
Second, conversion is a process. As I mentioned last week, conversion is that process by which we realize that God is God and we are not. We are not self-sufficient. As Aquinas said, we humans are dependent beings. We did not create ourselves. We owe our creation to God as well as our continued existence.
Notice that I use the word “PROCESS” very intentionally. Conversion is not a “one and done” kind of thing. Even a quick study of the great saints can be quite revealing. The conversion of St. Paul took at least nine years. Similarly, that St. Francis took at least seven.
So how does it work? As you will hear many times in the coming months and years, there are seven steps of conversion into intentional, missionary disciples.
- Pre-evangelization,
- evangelization,
- Initial Conversion/Intentional Discipleship,
- Initiatory Catechesis
- Adherence
- Ongoing formation
- Mission Discipleship
In the interest of time, I’m going to just get us to step 4 today.
Pre-evangelization. First there has to be a favorable environment that encourages an openness to the gospel message. Within the parish family, amongst ourselves, this is where a vibrant social life and community building come into play. Senior dances, youth hikes, parish picnics, CHAOS and other fun stuff. Really, if church isn’t fun, then we are doing it wrong. In Muldoon and Nunaka Valley and wherever else you might be, this means being a good neighbor, being involved in the local community, serving on community councils, the Thanksgiving Blessing, Outreach, and whatnot. As I mentioned in my first homily, our job as a parish is to become so much a part of our neighborhood so that they cannot imagine life without us. Pre-evangelization.
The second step, evangelization, is the sharing of the content of the faith and introduction to the encounter with the Risen Christ, manifested in the life of our parish family. It is an intentional invitation. This might be on an ACTS retreat, or a parish or diocesan pilgrimage, or during the liturgy. Or it may be a simple invitation to a neighbor to come with you to Church one day.
The third step is Initial Conversion/Intentional Discipleship. At a certain point, the Holy Spirit moves, and there is that “aha moment” when everything comes into focus. This is unique and different for every person. For some it is when they are at their best, for others it is when they are at their worst. Most of us are somewhere in between. It has been described various ways. “Seeing the light”; “bottoming out”; “being saved” are just some of the ways that people have tried to describe it. This is when our priorities change and we being to order our lives around Christ and stop expecting him to order his life around ours. Many people can point to the exact time or moment that this happened. For others, it may have been more gradual, or just the environment in which they were raised. Regardless, at some point, we take the good news to heart and make it our own. At this stage we may not be able to articulate it all that well, but we want to.
That is why conversion cannot stop there. Otherwise we are simply bumper sticker Christians. True conversion involves moving into ever deepening communion with Christ and His Church.
This is where initial and initiating catechesis comes in. The wonderful thing about being Catholic is that we don’t have to figure it out on our own. We have a 2000-year intellectual history of thinking about, pondering and coming up with effective ways of articulating the faith the comes to us from the apostles. This has been compiled into a marvelous compendium called the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The various means of Faith Formation here in the parish are all based on this document, whether it is Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, Faith Journeys, adult Bible study, or any of the myriad of other things going on, and especially in the Sunday homily. This is where we are informed and inspired so that as St. Peter says we are “always ready to give an accounting of the joy that is within you.”
I’ll get into Adherence, Ongoing Formation and Missionary Discipleship later, but this is enough for today.
For now it is enough to realize that conversion involves the whole person – mind, body and spirit. Also, it is a lifelong-ongoing process. It involves the reordering of our priorities and placing Christ in the center of our lives. It means intentionally engaging with the parish in the sacred assembly, in one’s household, and in small groups that will support and deepen our desire for ongoing communion.
Sure, it takes time. But we have to start somewhere. Why not here? Why not now?