The Stages of Conversion and Sanctity
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - August 31, 2007
St. Peter's conversion came when, at Jesus' word and against all piscatorial wisdom about catching fish in shallow water during darkness, he cast his nets out into deep water in broad daylight. That small act of trust, and the huge catch of fish that resulted, led him to fall on his knees at Jesus' feet saying, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." But the Lord reeled Peter in and allowed him to depart only when, as a reconciled man, he received the mission to fish for and reconcile other sinful men.
This episode points to the truth that to "put into the deep" always involves conversion, because it entails exceeding one's comfort zones through faith in Christ and his words. Conversion always demands turning away from one's present ideas and idols and turning with trust toward Christ.
But it does not stop there. The word "conversion" literally means, "turning with" Christ. Since Christ never stops turning toward God, others and us with love, so the process of conversion can never be "once for all," but must be a continual growth toward turning in unison with the will and the love of God.
We saw that in the life of St. Peter, who after his first conversion at the seashore of Galilee, needed continually to calibrate his heart to the heart of the Master. We see the stages of his progressive conversion after each of his many falls. His life shows us that conversion is a journey, not an event.
On Tuesday, we celebrated the memorial of St. Augustine (354-430), whom Pope Benedict in April called "one of the greatest converts in the history of the Church." Many Christians are familiar with the most notable aspects of St. Augustine's conversion story, which we briefly mentioned last week in the column on his mother, St. Monica: how Augustine turned from Manichean philosophy to the truth of the Christian faith and from a wild life of lust to one of chaste love for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.
But as Benedict said in his April homily in Pavia where Augustine's relics are enshrined, Augustine's journey of conversion did not end when he was baptized at 33. It was just the first of three "landmark conversions" in an itinerary that extended throughout Augustine's whole adult life.
His first fundamental conversion, Benedict declared, was to the truth. Augustine was a passionate searcher for the truth, but looked for it in the wrong places of false philosophy and counterfeit love. Eventually he discovered it in Christ, in the Truth incarnate. He discovered that his heart would be restless until it rested in God, and to rest in God, meant to humble himself in faith to accept God's truth and live by it.
The second conversion was a further step in humility: to live, not for himself, but for others. "Christ died for all," he read in St. Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, "so that those who live should not live for themselves, but for him who died for them."
After his first conversion, Augustine determined to live in prayerful solitude with his friends, but God had other plans. The bishop of Hippo needed someone who could preach well in Latin, and, though Augustine initially resisted, he allowed himself to be ordained a priest and then a bishop. This required great sacrifice. "This was the second conversion which this man, struggling and suffering, was constantly obliged to make," Benedict stresssed: "to be available to everyone, time and again, and not for his own perfection; time and again, to lay down his life with Christ so that others might find him, true Life."
The third and decisive phase of his transformative odyssey came at the end of his life, when, the Pope stated, Augustine discovered a third and definitive stage of humility: "Not only the humility of integrating his great thought into the humble faith of the Church, not only the humility of translating his great knowledge into the simplicity of proclamation, but also the humility of recognizing that he himself and the entire pilgrim Church needed and continually need the merciful goodness of a God who forgives every day." The deepest sense of conversion occurs when we become, like God, people of mercy, and share that merciful love with others.
It took St. Augustine a lifetime to learn of the need not just to "toward toward" God's merciful love but to "turn with" it toward others.
He would write, "Too late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new!" His feast is an occasion for us to love and live that beauty now, along our own lifetime pilgrimage of conversion.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
