A Leaven In The World . . . Lent: Season For Deeper Conversion From Death To Life
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Italians, when the subject of marriage and therefore also of children comes up, are quick to say, “Due è basta,” meaning, “Two children are enough.” Young people decide long before they even meet the person they will marry that it will be thus also for them.
If you’ve learned to love Italy and the Italians as I have and haven’t fallen for the lies of overpopulation, contraception, and abortion, then you plead as I have with them to change their minds and hearts.
I entered a classroom of young children in faith formation once at a parish in Bacoli, outside of Naples on the peninsula which forms the west end of its famous bay, and made an effort to free the children of the lie that there is no room for one more child in every family.
I asked them to chant together with me, “Due non è basta!” And, after we practiced a few times, I asked them to go home and repeat this to their parents.
No: “Due non è basta,” and never was. And now the death knell has effectively been sounded for Italy, with officials in Rome publicly reading the prayers of the dying over her grave. A great nation falls by her own hand. Viva l’Italia!
What does family size have to do with Lent? Just as families must be converted to generous, contraception-free marital love, and so are called to an ongoing conversion from death to life by rejecting an anti-life will, so individuals must be converted to a life of open and generous love for God by an ongoing rejection of sin and idolatry, of the hidden corruption of evil.
Being a human in relation to God is simply a matter of ongoing conversion. Human beings are, simply, sinners and God is pure holiness. When you try to put these two things together they cannot mix, but meet only in contradiction. The only thing that can bring them together is the mercy of God, the fact that He has in Christ made it possible for our souls, despite the reality of our sins, to be made “white as snow.”
This basic reality makes clear what has been said so well and by so many for so long: Christianity is, in fact, a life of ongoing conversion. We look forward to “resting on our laurels” only in Heaven. Here on Earth we may be able to pause from time to time to look back briefly upon, and to meditate about, the traces of our journey thus far, but then we must once again “rise and be on our way,” as St. John Paul II invited us, quoting the Scriptures.
Though we may be loath to admit it, changing our minds once they are made up is one of the hardest things we will ever do. The Lord as recorded in the Scriptures uses the image of moving a mountain to describe the great difficulty involved in changing the stubborn mind and will of the human person.
Metanoia is this fundamental change of the mind and will to courageously seek God by rejecting anything incompatible with this desire.
So often a person bound through lack of forgiveness to the past remains deadlocked in the struggle with self because he has decided he is “not ready to go back” to the Church, where hope lies in undergoing needed change. This is an example of the stubbornness involved in rejecting the very source of life while admitting that that is what is needed.
Metanoia is a Greek word which means “changing the mind.” More often than not, we interpret changing the mind to mean opting for vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate or deciding to go to the 11 a.m. Mass instead of the 9 a.m. Not a superficial matter of one good or merely neutral option over another, metanoia addresses the matter of desire itself. The change of mind we are talking about in metanoia cuts to the very heart of one’s fundamental orientation toward corruption and death or forgiveness and life.
The Church’s preaching in Lent addresses the “hidden corruption of evil.” Each of us is called to enter into that deepest struggle with self that takes place in one’s own heart and mind, where death and life meet in the desire for either good or evil. Where we encounter idolatry or desire for evil these must be rooted out entirely.
This is done through an ongoing habit of rejecting the near occasions of sin. Only in this way can we remain in the state of grace. And only with Christ’s constant help through the Eucharist for the life of grace, and Confession to restore it after committing serious sin, can we choose the abundant life of Heaven, which grows as joy in hearts alive with the love of God.
Just as married couples must change a desire for the idolatry of self in order to do the will of God through generous openness to new life, so the individual must reject Satan and all his works and all his empty promises, in the free choice for God, never resting until Heaven is won.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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(Follow Fr. Cusick on Facebook at Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick and on Twitter @MCITLFrAphorism. He blogs occasionally at mcitl.blogspot.com and APriestLife.blogspot.com. You can email him at mcitl.blogspot.com@gmail.com.)
