“Christianity is not simply a doctrine: it is an encounter in faith with God made present in our history through the incarnation of Jesus.” (Pope John Paul II, speaking at World Youth Day 2004)
The term “conversion” means different things to different people so I though it best to clarify what I mean when I use the term. I use it in a sense similar to what Pope John Paul speaks of as an encounter with Jesus, namely, that of the spiritual awakening of a “nominal” or “immature” Christian to the the Fathers’ Love and the individual’s surrender to that Love. This results in a transformation of the individual from being a self-willed person to being a God-willed person who manifests the Love of God in his/her life in all relationships and circumstances. The only way with which such a transformation can occur is through a total surrender to Jesus, as the son of God, whose spirit dwells in us.
A more literate an erudite explanation of what I mean may be found in the following on-line document regarding the conversion of St. Therese of Lisieux: http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2day/823442conn.html
Here is an excerpt from that document:
UNRESERVED SURRENDER TO GOD
A life committed to the gospel call of loving service to the neighbor is the route — long and difficult — to fully religious conversion, to falling-in-love with God without limits or qualifications or conditions or reservations. In fulfilling our capacity for self-transcendence, such an unrestricted being-in-love with God is experienced as otherworldly joy, peace, bliss.(10) Falling-in-love involves surrender, and falling-in-love with God involves the most profound surrender — the surrender of one’s deepest (though unadmitted) pretense to absolute autonomy. Such unrestricted, loving surrender allows God to move from the periphery to the center of one’s life. Now all of one’s life — indeed, all of reality — is seen as gift.
In the same year in which Thérèse wrote the autobiographical narrative of her Christmas conversion, she committed herself to an action that epitomized the definition of religious conversion: total, permanent, unconditional self-surrender in love. On Trinity Sunday, June 9, 1895, she felt strongly inspired to make a total offering of herself to God’s merciful love in the form of an Act of Oblation.
“In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God! (277)“
The surrender’s totality is conveyed through the image of martyrdom. Permanence is implied in the desire that love consume her incessantly. The oblation is framed precisely in terms of love, a framework radically different from most offerings made by nuns in Thérèse’s day who gave themselves to God’s justice as victims of reparation for outrages of atheism and secularism.
Conversion is usually a gradual process, though its manifestation may be concentrated in a momentous decision or declaration.(11) So it is in Thérèse’s case, where her earlier poetry, letters, and autobiographical manuscript manifest an ever deepening love of God. The Act of Oblation becomes the concentrated declaration of that total, loving abandon.
Conversion also means a new beginning that later blossoms in a cumulative sequence of developments.(12) In Thérèse’s case, there is a new perspective at the time of the Oblation; then, later, still newer developments. Thérèse affirms that “the grace” of the Act of Oblation was a new understanding about how much Jesus desires to be loved, and a new beginning of being penetrated and surrounded by love. Her surrender was also a principle of later dramatically new experience and insight: the sudden experience, at Easter 1896, of a plunge into a radical trial of faith; and the remarkably new insights this generated regarding the fact of authentic unbelief and her own affirmation of a relationship of sisterhood with unbelievers. She who formerly was afraid of soiling her baptismal robe could later peacefully declare identity with unbelievers and speak of sinners as “us” (180-81, 212).
Thérèse’s surrender in love also exemplifies qualities of the particular type of religious conversion that is Christian.(13) For Christians, conversion is God’s own love flooding our hearts. Thérèse understands this love to be the focal point of her experience. Christian conversion is rooted in confidence. On her death bed, her hand barely able to hold a pencil, Thérèse wrote, “I go to Him with confidence and love.” Heroism is not required for Christian conversion. Rather, the model is a child who takes for granted that it will receive. These are exactly Thérèse’s own sentiments: “I am only a child, powerless and weak, and yet it is my weakness that gives me the boldness of offering myself as a victim of Your Love, O Jesus!” (181, 259, 195).
Dying in great pain and the darkness of her trial of faith, Thérèse’s last writings are, nevertheless, permeated with a sense of being fulfilled — filled with the immensity of love — and of missionary concern to draw everyone in the world with her into the immensity of this love. Even in emptiness she is fulfilled by reaching out in love.
(excerpted from: “Conversion as Self-Transcendence Exemplified in the Life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux” by Joann Wolski Conn and Walter E. Conn)
St. Therese’s Life : http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=105
St. Theres’s Book: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/7/16772/16772.txt
