Conversion through a personal encounter with Christ

This is the third of five blogs intended to help you to DISCOVER YOURSELF IN GOD. Press this link if you wish to start reading from the first blog.

The discovery and living of God’s dream happen through a conversion (or turning back) to Christ. As Pope Benedict explains,

“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

BENEDICT XVI, Deus caritas est, 25 Dec. 2005, n.1

Thus, it is this encounter and not one’s efforts that enable the person to convert or turn back to one’s original.

The experience of Zacchaeus

“The theological-spiritual sense of conversion consists in leaving oneself be transformed from an encounter with the person of Christ: this happens due to this contact with Him as happened to Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). This encounter with the person of Jesus creates a new mind, that is, it enables the individual to make one’s own the way of thinking and acting of Jesus.”

Carlo Laudazi, L’uomo chiamato all’unione con Dio in Cristo. Temi fondamentali di teologia spirituale, Edizioni OCD, Rome 2006, p. 314 (translated by the author).

“How much strength of attraction there was in the look of Jesus when it met that of Zacchaeus, that he climbed on a tree in order to see “who Jesus was” (Luke 19:3), knowing that he was going to pass that way. “When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today’” (Luke 19:5). Having came “to seek out and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10), Jesus has turned a simple curiosity into a propitious occasion to bestow grace and salvation.

Now Zacchaeus ‘sees’, that is, he experiences who Jesus really is: He experienced the tender mercy of God through the salvific Messiah, who comes to visit him as the sun from on high and give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death (cf. Luke 1,78-79). By entering his house, Jesus, defeats, eliminates forever, the darkness of sin that rendered it dark, inhospitable, cold. This presence makes beautiful, luminous, the heart of Zacchaeus, filling it with joy, with life, with love.

This radical change is confirmed by the decision: “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much” (Luke 19:8). His good works attest in an unequivocal way the new identity acquired by Zacchaeus: in their completion, he becomes beautiful, lovable to the eyes of all those people that, up to now, had despised and avoided him, since he was “a chief tax collector and was rich”, therefore “a sinner” (Luke 19:2.7).”

Vincenzo Battaglia, Sentimenti e bellezza del Signore Gesù. Cristologia e Contemplazione, vol.3, EDB, Bologna 2011, p. 155 (translated by the author).

Thus, even though Zacchaeus knew ‘who Jesus was’ there was no significant change in his life until he experienced a ‘personal encounter’.

Encountering the mystery now

“The mysteries of Jesus Christ are in some circumstances past, and in another way they remain and are present and perpetual. They are past as regards their performance but they are present as regards their virtue. Their virtue never passes, nor will the love with which they have been accomplished ever pass […] The spirit of God, by whom this mystery was wrought, the internal state of the external mystery […] is always alive, actual, and present to Jesus […]. This obliges us to treat the things and mysteries of Jesus, not as things past and abolished, but as things present, living, and even eternal, from which also we have to gather a present and eternal fruit.”

Pierre de Bérulle, Oeuvres complèts de Bérulle, ed. J.P. Migne, Paris 1856, pp. 998; 1022; 1050; 1362 (English translation as in Jordan Aumann, Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition, Ignatius Press, Eugene OR 1985, p. 198).

This reflection of Bérulle introduces us to another reality, that is, when the Christian reads the gospels, one is not dealing merely with a historical person, but with a real person who is actually present.

Thus, as Zacchaeus met Jesus when “He entered Jericho and was passing through it” (Luke 19:1), the person today is able to actually meet Jesus in the episodes narrated in the Gospels.

This encounter is possible due to Christ own promise, “the Advocate,the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). In this phrase, the verb ‘remind,’ ‘zakar,’ derived from ‘zikkaron’ the ‘memory’ of Easter, does not only mean to commemorate, but to live a right now experience.

Thus, through this promise, we have the certainty, that through the reading of the Gospels, together with the promised aid of the Holy Spirit, as John Eudes explains,

“We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus’ life and his mysteries and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church […]. For it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in his mysteries and to extend them to and continue them in us and in his whole Church. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us.”

John Eudes, in Liturgy of the Hours, Week 33, Friday, Office of the readings; as in Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 521.

Within oneself

Since Christ is always present in us, our relationship with Him happens within us. “This is the effect of grace, of the active presence of the Holy Spirit in us” (John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 6 Aug. 1993, n. 21).

Saints like Teresa of Avila, leads us by example. In the book of her life she states,

“I tried as hard as I could to keep Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, present within me, and that was my prayer. If I reflect upon some phrase of his passion, I represented Him to myself interiorly.”

Teresa of Avila, The Book of her life, Chapter 4, n. 7.

“This is my method of prayer […], since I could not reflect discursively with the intellect, I strove to represent Christ within me, and it did me greater good—in my opinion.”

Teresa of Avila, The Book of her life, Chapter 9, n. 4.

This attitude of encountering Christ (/God) within oneself is also highly expressed by Teresa’s poem in which she imagines God telling the soul, to seek herself in Him, and to seek Him in oneself.

“Soul, you must seek yourself in Me, and in yourself seek Me”

Teresa of Avila, Poems, n. 8.

Thus, during one’s prayer, the Christian does not need to make a big effort to encounter Christ. He or she does not need to ‘run ahead’ and ‘climb trees’ as Zacchaeus did (cf. Luke 19:4). One has only to acknowledge this real presence, which is always there unconditionally even if one is living in mortal sin (Cf., John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 1, n. 8).

Take your time now to acknowledge, maybe for the first time, this presence within you, and relate to him. This presence is there, even if some might consider you, that you are living ‘in a state of sin’.

This was the third of 5 blogs intended to help you to DISCOVER YOURSELF IN GOD.

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