The Church is the Totus Christus, the Whole Christ, and it complements the individual Christ. In its physical aspect Christ's Body is perfect, but in its mystical aspect it is merely growing to perfection, for now it includes not only Him but us, with our imperfections. The prayers, sacrifices, and liturgy of the Church are offered not by the members alone - not by Christ, the Head alone - but by the Head and members together to the glory of God, the Everlasting Father. A new cell is added to the Mystical Body of Christ at every Baptism.

So much for the two most conspicuous effects of conversion in theological terms. But the psychological effects of conversions and incorporation into the Whole Christ are those of which the convert and his circle are sometimes more sensibly aware.

There is, first, a recentering of life and a revolution of all its values. This fresh, intellectual readjustment of thought to make room for God is one proof that conversion is not an emotional matter, for the emotions do not normally control the judgments. Before conversion, life is a confused and unintelligible blur, like the figures on a flattened Japanese lantern; afterward, it resembles that same lantern opened to its full height, with a candle to reveal the unity of the pattern and design.

Faith not only puts the candle into the lantern of life - it also lights it. A highly educated person before conversion may have had a vast knowledge of history, literature, science, anthropology, and philosophy, but these branches of his knowledge were divided into watertight compartments with no live correlation of one to the others; they were only isolated tidbits of information, a vast hors d'oeuvre of detail. After conversion the same facts are gathered into a unity, ordered in a hierarchy of knowledge that reveals an overwhelming evidence of Providence in history and also confers a new unity on one's personal life. What was before information has now become wisdom.

The unconverted soul was often exhausted, fatigued from having used up all its energies trying to find a purpose in life. It was tired in its mind and then tired in its body. A mind that cannot decide where it is going next soon exhausts itself by indecisiveness. Anxieties and fears possess the mind and fritter away the strength of the body. But once the goal of life is discovered, one does not need to waste his energy trying to discover it; the energy can now be spent in making the journey. The travel circulars are thrown away as one plunges into the joy of a voyage of discovery.

Many a young student in college is confused because he is without a philosophy of life or a pattern of existence. His education is but a substitution of this theory for that, a jettisoning of one relative point of view for another. The statistics he studied in his senior year are obsolete the year after graduation. His professors, who used the philosophy of Spencer as their inspiration twenty year ago, are now using Marx or Freud - withing another ten years they will have found another substitute. Education has become little more than the mechanical replacing of one point of view by another, as the automobile displaced the horse and buggy. The mind is constantly solicited by contrary and contradictory points of views; it becomes more harassed than a body in constant oscillation between chill and fever. With conversion, education becomes an orderly progression from one truth that need never be discarded to the next. The student is given reasons and motives of credibility for an ordered philosophy of life; his education is now a growing penetration into a central mystery, a sounding of new depths of truth. His knowledge and understanding accrue, as life expands from cell to cell in the development of every living body.

Associated with the convert's sense of intellectual growth is a consciousness of being newly possessed of the  intellectual heritage of the past, of having joined a living tradition of sound thinking. A past one respects is an essential for physical life. As an individual cannot think without a memory, neither can a society think without tradition. No longer uprooted from the past, but made the heir of its wealth, the convert ceases to visit the past as a mere antiquarian; he brings the past and the present into happy conjunction as the stepping stone toward progress and enrichment in the future.

The convert's judgment of values in his personal life is no less radically transformed. Things that before seemed precious are now considered trivial, and things that before seemed inconsequential have now become the essence of real life. Without the Divine sense of values that conversion brings, the soul is like a department store where the wrong price tags are on everything; hairpins sell for a thousand dollars, and diamond rings for a nickel. Conversion hangs the price tags on the right things and restores a true sense of values.

That is why the outlook of a convert is entirely changed on such subjects as marriage, death, education, wealth, pain, and suffering. As a stained glass window looks different from the inside of the Church than it does from the outside, so all the great problem of life take on anew meaning and significance when one stands inside the Faith. Such a person now sees why religious education is essential - for unless the soul is saved, nothing is saved. Marriage is sacred to him because because it is a symbol of the union of Christ and the Church. Suffering becomes bearable as a gift of God, to be offered in reparation for sin and for filling up the sufferings that are wanting to the Body of Christ; sickness is accepted in the knowledge that God is more concerned with what I am for Him than what I get done. The old eagerness for economic security gives way to a serenity that does not worry about tomorrow before it comes and that trusts in God at all times. Peace is no longer understood to mean an escape from the crosses of life, but as the victory won over them by faith.

A second perceptible result of conversion is a definite change in behavior and conduct of life. Not only does conversion change one's values; it also reverses the tendencies and energies of life, directing them to another end. If the convert before conversion was already leading a good moral life, there is now less emphasis on keeping a law and more emphasis on maintaining a relationship of love. If the convert has been a sinner, his spiritual life frees him from habits and excesses that before weighed down the soul. He no longer need resort to alcohol or sleeping tablets. He often finds that these practices were not so much appetites as attempts to flee responsibility or to ensure, by plunging into unconsciousness, that he could avoid the necessity of choice. Before conversion, it was behavior that to a large extent determined belief; after conversion, it is belief that determines behavior.

There is no longer a tendency to find scapegoats to blame for the faults of self, but rather a consciousness that the reformation of the world must begin with the reformation self. There is still a fear of God, but it is not the servile fear a subject has for a dictator, but a filial fear, such as children have a good parent whom they would never wish to hurt. From such a Love one does not ever need to run away, and the previous acts of dissipation, which were disguised forms of flight, are now renounced.

Once the soul has turned to God, there is no longer a struggle to give up these habits; they are not so much defeated, as crowded out by new interests. There is no longer a need of escape - for one is no longer in flight from oneself. The person who once did his own will now seeks to do God's will; the one who once served sin now hates it; the person who once found thoughts of God dry or even unpleasant now hopes above all else one day to behold the God Whom he loves. The transition the soul has undergone is as unmistakable as the passage from death to life; there has been, not mere giving up a sin, but such a surrender to Divine Love as makes him shrink from sin because he would not wound the Divine Beloved.

Conscience, thus, transformed in a convert, undergoes a paradoxical change: It is not nearly so harsh a master as before, in spite of the reform in conduct. It is true that behavior is changed - but that is only a surface proof of the fact that conscience is changed. Before conversion, conscience seemed to be a restraining, coercive power; God was a hostile and exacting judge; the commandments were prohibitions; and the Church was an inhibition. Responsibilities were identifies with obligation; duty was seen as opposed to desire; the morally right was identified with the physically unpleasant; and love was opposed to morality. But after conversion the conscience no longer accuses; it never seems to command, or order, or inhibit, because there are no longer two wills in opposition. The will of the convert is the will of God. There is no need for a conscience to tell him what "ought to be done." Conscience is swallowed up in love, and there is no duty or "must" between lovers.

Duty, to the sinful mind, was the unwilling fulfillment of a command. Now, desiring only what God desires, the convert needs no restraint on his wishes; he is beyond good and evil, in the realm where there is no duty "to behave" but only the joy of living. What was previously a compulsory task is now a spontaneous pleasure. Converts who have had the habit of sleeping late are fearful at first that they will not be able to rise early enough for Sunday mass - and certainly not, they tell you, early enough for daily Mass. But once possessed of Divine Love, they find that early rising is a joy, for nothing is hard to one who loves.

Before, life was based on self-determination, and the will always worked to safeguard self-interest and selfishness. Afterwards, life is Christ-determined; the convert wants no other mind than that of Christ, no other will than Christ's will. Behavior has changed at its source; now it issues from a relationship of love. Generosity is easy; sharing apples will not make people brothers and sisters, but if they are conscious of their relationship, they will gladly share an apple.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -