Millions of people call themselves Christians, believing, in many cases, to have converted to Christianity. Now, is this the case? What is conversion exactly? To convert is to change. Consider the shimmering color butterfly. Before becoming this beautiful insect, it looked like something else. It was, to begin with, a tiny egg practically invisible to the naked eyes, then a larva. Then it went through various transformations before becoming what it is. The Bible reveals that we too must undergo a real metamorphosis, because that is what it is all about.
Conversion to real life presupposes a return to interiority, which opens up access to eternity. Evoking the Augustinian thought, it is a question of seeking God first in ourselves.
In the book of Life (chap. 10) Saint Teresa of Avila recalls the Confessions of Saint Augustine, of the two slaveries that he lived in his own flesh: intellectual and moral, then this situation of uneasiness, of separation between the ends and infinity. The struggle between the two calls, the two lusts, the two loves, with the conviction that experience is rooted, that all liberation will be impossible by the mechanisms and the force of the only will. However in the game of this struggle, arises, after the failure of solitary efforts, an unpredictable grace of deliverance, which we can only recognize as sovereign and divine gratuitous. The slave of yesterday begins a new experience that of a new creation, experience of real and progressive freedom, of participation in the freedom of God. Teresa of Avila recognized herself in this description, precise, sober, and poignant.
Love is the source of conversion; conversion brings us into the experience and the dynamics of a new creation. Jesus who died and rose gives this freedom. He calls us to open up to his Love. God creates this freedom in us.
