Word to the Wise
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - St. Peter Claver, SJ
[Colossians 3:1-11 and Luke 6:20-26]Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.
The words "convert" and "conversion" are used to mean many things! In ordinary parlance it can mean changing the purpose, and sometimes the physical environment, of an existing reality so that it has a different purpose and may look very different. Usually the original is discernible so that one may see that a change of some kind has occurred. A garage that has become a storage shed would still be showing its original purpose! We might even continue to call it "the garage" although a car may never darken its doors again! But in matters of religious faith, conversion refers to something more than the external and visible aspect of life. The Colossians, like some other "converts" of St. Paul, seemed to believe that once baptized they were saved and there was no need to change their way of living! What this meant, however, is that there was no interior conversion and so life was really no different other than a kind of superficial belief in Jesus. That is not conversion! St. Paul refers to putting on an entirely new "self" and becoming a new person! This has to be more than "skin-deep." When this kind of conversion occurs, behavior of the kind he describes - "immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry" - become "unthinkable," as it were. The reason such things become unthinkable is that the new person is identified with Christ and so are all those who go through the same conversion, so that ethnic and other social forms of discrimination, along with the common sins of life become not just things of the past but not really possible anymore. Conversion of this kind is more than changing one's external membership in one religion to another. The latter may be an indication of an internal conversion, but not necessarily! The kind of conversion St. Paul speaks of may not require a Catholic to change his or her faith, but it may require a Catholic to change their way of being Catholic! One way I speak of this in "parish missions" is the difference between being an "intentional Catholic" and an "accidental Catholic." The "intentional Catholic" is one who embraces not simply the tradition with its contents but lives it as a deliberate choice. The "accidental Catholic" is one who simply happens to have been born and raised as a Catholic but would not be otherwise discernible in their faith commitment except they go to a Catholic church on Sunday and not one of another religious tradition. Conversion is a deep and challenging process to which all of us are continually called. It's not a "one-time" experience like the Colossians, Corinthians, and many others since St. Paul's day have believed. It is a daily effort and an intentional one. Without it, Christianity is little more than a religious facade! AMEN C
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