Lent: Personal conversion
by Father Frank DeSiano, CSP
February 23, 2015

Lent gives us an important opportunity to get in touch with the essential and personal conversion that is at the heart of Catholic life.

What? You’re saying…we are converted?

Yes we are, and it seems to be a big secret for a lot of Catholics. Even though we often speak of conversion of heart, even though Pope Francis has emphasized conversion as a “personal encounter with Jesus Christ” – something we have every time we pray or worship – we Catholics still do not think of ourselves as converted. 

So Lent is a great opportunity to get in touch with our conversion story, and the ongoing conversion that following Jesus involves. If you want to get a feel for your conversion story, just take a few moments and write down where you were spiritually at the age, say, of 18, and then at 28, and then at 38 … and so forth. You will find two important things about your life: first, that your relationship with God has undergone change and deepening over the years, and, secondly, that there probably is a theme or central drama in your story of faith.

I remember a priest talking to me on the phone, frustrated because a young man had come up to him in the parish a short while back. This young man had gone on a retreat at a local Evangelical church; he then told the priest, “Father for the first time I gave my life to Jesus last week at that retreat.” And the priest said back to him, “What did you think you were doing when you received Confirmation.”

One of the issues in our Catholic lives is that we’ve not been trained to think in relational terms. So our faith looks like a list of things we do and obligations we have met. Yet everything in our Catholic life is about our personal meeting with Jesus, and how Jesus brings us to the Father, and how Jesus opens the power of the Spirit in our lives.

Think about going to Mass: from the first dipping of our hand in Holy Water to the last dismissal of the congregation at the end of Mass: we have one experience after another of meeting Jesus. In the congregation. In the readings. In the Eucharistic Prayer. When we receive Holy Communion. And when we are sent forth as disciples at the end of Mass. The Mass is one unbroken expression of conversion, discipleship and commitment.

So here’s a Lenten practice: every day, review your life and count the ways you engaged with Jesus in prayer and in service. As you do this, notice the elements of conversion that abound in your life and pray for the chance to respond even more deeply to the call of Christ in your heart.

Father Frank DeSiano, CSP, is president of Paulist Evangelization Ministries.