Conversion, Conversion, Conversion

There’s nothing like a convert for zeal.  Perhaps best avoided at dinner parties and anytime being tiresome is… tiresome.  I know, because I was that guy when I came to the Catholic Faith in the Anglican Catholic Church.  I came from an evangelical background and was already well-versed in proof-texting the Scriptures and in argument.  I was in law school at the time, which probably made everything worse for those around me.

My doubts had been resolved.  Difficulties unknotted.  Mysteries embraced.  I was converted in mind.  I would’ve said at the time that I was converted, period.  My evangelical friends didn’t like that I used the word “converted”, but it seemed appropriate to me; I had crossed into another realm, in which we spoke and practiced and even thought in different ways than those in which I had spoken, practiced, and thought as an evangelical.  

But I was not deeply converted.  I know this because I was not really praying.  Prayer is the heart of real conversion, and I was barely dipping my toes in the great ocean of prayer.  In fact, I think the analogy of beachgoers aptly describes the prayer life of a great many Christians, and I know it from personal experience.  If prayer is an ocean, then most of us spend most of our time just looking at the water, perhaps appreciating it in a detached or in a sentimental way.  Maybe we take our shoes off and step into the part of the beach where the highest waves come, just enough to get our feet wet.  Some people will go into the water up to their knees.  Some will go for a swim, but most who go in will float on the top on air mattresses or tubes.  A few may put on a mask and explore the shallows.  A very few will don scuba gear and spend real time in the sea.

Of course, unlike the ocean, the atmosphere of prayer is one which we’re designed to breathe, though it requires acclimatization because we’re not used to it.  When we do pray, it’s often little more than our delivery to God of a list of demands or wishes.  But this is only an anemic kind of prayer which doesn’t do justice to God as a personal being who wants a real relationship with us as persons.  Real prayer, prayer which starts from the position of a sinful and rebellious creature approaching the Creator, creates repentance within us.  And a penitent heart is a heart that is being converted.

Conversion should be an ongoing reality for us.  It’s not something that occurs once and from which we move on.  Because we constantly feel the pull of the world, the flesh, and the devil (all usually disguised as just doing the normal things our society values), and because we all succumb to this pull in ways both great and small, we need constantly to be undergoing conversion.  

Using the forms of confession in the Prayer Book and in devotional manuals is a very good habit to get into.  You can find them online, too.  For your convenience, we’ve added a form for you to use at the bottom of this newsletter in the “Daily Prayer” section. 

The benefit of using this kind of form is that it supplies what we often lack, and that is a true attitude of repentance.  You may say, “But isn’t it just fake if I say words I don’t mean?”  And I’d say that you should never say prayers you don’t mean if by that we are talking about saying prayers with an intention that is contrary to what the prayer is expressing.  But if you find yourself in that position, you should immediately cry out to God to give you a right intention.

What I’m not talking about is emotions.  I do believe very firmly that we should say prayers that we don’t feel.  We should say them all the time if they are the tested and approved prayers of the Catholic and Orthodox faith.  Our emotions may be very out of whack.  They probably will be out of whack very often.  We should say prayers that we don’t feel just like we should take medicine that doesn’t taste good: because it is good for us.  Over time, obedience in prayer transcends our emotions and feelings and in fact begins to heal and amend them.

Speaking personally, I can say that most of my experiences of a positive emotional outcome in prayer have come when I have begun my prayers reluctantly or with some internal grumbling - when I have prayed despite not wanting to. And those positive emotional outcomes are very rewarding.  But we can’t make idols of them.  They are not what we are pursuing when we pray: we are pursuing an intimate, personal relationship with God.

So never stop seeking God, and you will never stop the journey of conversion.  There are so many levels of conversion that you will discover that it will constantly surprise you.  “Conversion” just means being made more and more amenable to a relationship of personal intimacy with God, of allowing the life of Christ to grow and bear fruit within us, so we should hope and pray never to cease from the process of conversion.