Be Converted!
A Reflection on the Gospel of Luke 17:26-37; 17 November 2023
The Reading can be found at https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111723.cfm
Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you, therefore, to strengthen your faith in Jesus Christ, to be authentically converted to him. He alone gives us the true life and can liberate us from all our fears and sluggishness, from all our anguish. (Pope Benedict XVI, Homily 20 Nov 2011)
Jesus in the Gospel today is calling the disciples, calling us, to an authentic, continuing, and continuous conversion. The proof of authentic conversion is repentance and the personal determination to go and sin no more (John 8:11). This conversion of heart transcends all that calls us away from God.
“Authentic conversion should not be reduced to external forms or vague intentions, but calls for us to involve and transform our entire existence.” (St John Paul II Homily 13 Feb 2002)
Continuing conversion is a persistent love of God and neighbor until we experience earthly death. Continuous conversion is our moment-to-moment effort to refuse to look back to our life left behind, our life outside of Christ. Such a return to an attachment to the things of this world is, as it was for Lot’s wife, deadly. As our Lord reminds us again and again in the Gospels,
Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it. (Luke 17:33 NABRE)
Conversion is not a singular event but a way of life, a heart of stone transformed into a beating heart of flesh.
And I will give them another heart and a new spirit I will put within them. From their bodies I will remove the hearts of stone, and give them hearts of flesh, so that they walk according to my statutes, taking care to keep my ordinances. Thus they will be my people, and I will be their God. (Ezekiel 11:19–20)
It is so easy, amid everyday life, to slip into a form of spiritual sloth, what Pope Benedict XVI calls, “sluggishness”. In the monotonous or mundane routine of life at work (in the fields), doing the necessary everyday chores (at the grindstone), and seeking rest and recuperation (in our beds) we can often slip into the tedium of moving from one event to the next and become sluggish in our devotion to the Lord. Our attachment to the daily routine, often becomes our comfort zone, and subtly lulls us to sleep when our Lord needs us most. Or worse, like the people of Israel traveling to the promised land, we long for our bowls of meat and eating our fill of bread even though enslaved to sin. (Exodus 16:3)
Conversion is not “one and done” but a constant striving after the Kingdom of God in the everyday. When things get tough, or worse, we become sluggish in our faith, the disciple can easily slip back into a focus on the pleasures of life (“eating and drinking”), relationships (“marrying and being given in marriage”), or possessions (“buying, selling, planting, building”). It is not that the pleasures of life, relationships, and possessions are unimportant; however, we are created for so much more! Like Noah who built an ark despite the world looking on and laughing, and Lot, who trusting in the Lord, left His world behind; we too, must be ready to set all aside when the Lord calls you and I to our true task. We cannot become so comfortable, sluggish, in the mundane that we are distracted when the Lord calls. Being ready for the Lord is a determined and continuous dying to self, such that the kingdom of heaven is realized on earth. Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew that, “the one who perseveres to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13 NABRE) St Paul adds in his First Letter to the Corinthians,
“Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win.” (1 Corinthians 9:24 NABRE)
Ask yourself today, if you have become, or are becoming, sluggish, tired, in your devotion to enacting God’s call in your life, the running of the race? Perhaps, you are too comfortable in this world. What distractions cause you to lose your ability to endure in faith or to “look back”? What keeps you from an authentic, continuing, and continuous radical turning of your heart away from sin and evil and toward God? What keeps you from conversion?
A strengthening for conversion can come from praying the “Morning Offering” and then living that offering out amid the world, in the extraordinary, and in the mundane.
O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer them for all the intentions of your sacred heart: the salvation of souls, reparation for sin, the reunion of all Christians. I offer them for the intentions of our bishops and all the apostles of prayer, and in particular for those recommended by our Holy Father this month.
Today is the Lord’s call for our conversion; “repent, therefore, and be converted!” (Acts 3:19 NABRE)
Endnotes
Benedict XVI. Homilies of His Holiness Benedict XVI (English). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013. Print.
John Paul II. Homilies of Pope John Paul II (English). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2014. Print.
New American Bible. Revised Edition. Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011. Print.
In my younger days, I had a disrespectful attitudes of Jews during the Exodus. How could they after a those huge miracles, complain, build a Golden Calf etc.! I,of course, would never do that. It has taken me sometime to realize that I frequently do the same! I still slip. We need reminders. I do! So thank you for this fantastic reflection!!!
Conversion is an event that begins a way of life. It starts out as a singular event. Our exaltation or lifting happens in the time of God’s choosing (kairos time) when we humble ourselves towards Him (cf. 1Peter 5:6).