Conversion to the Christian faith today

Apply

Conversion to the Christian faith today

Journal Title: The Person and the Challenges. The Journal of Theology, Education, Canon Law and Social Studies Inspired by Pope John Paul II - Year 2016, Vol 6, Issue 2

Abstract

Allow me to introduce my input with a presentation of three meetings made recently in the catechumenate of my parish: with two people seeking baptism (I will call them Anne and Viviane), and one who wanted to re ‑discover the faith (Yves). This first pastoral meeting was an opportunity for these three people to make a first narration of their conversion. This will give us a first insight into conversion to Christianity today. Yves, who is over sixty, gives the place, date and exact time when what he calls a „heart to heart” colloquium with Jesus took place. He described how, on that day, he felt relieved of all the evil that had accumulated in him. This experience was the trigger of his journey. Anne, who is 58 years old, asks for baptism because according to her she is in a situation of suffering due to black magic that her mother and her daughter are exerting on her. Her husband died five years ago. Viviane, finally, is a young woman of 28 years. She says that since she arrived in the area a year ago, she has continually received signs. She wanted to change job to be closer to people and everything worked excellently: as a sales manager, she found a new job immediately as a nurse’s aide, her new colleagues are very religious, she found an apartment close to her work and, finally, she realized that from her window she can see two crosses erected on a nearby mountain. Coming from a Protestant background – her aunt being an Evangelical missionary, she decided that to this profusion of signs she was to ask for baptism in the Catholic Church to which she attributes the value of tradition. We cannot prejudge anything about the path ahead of them. But these three examples already show the diversity of conversion situations. A sudden conversion, an illness which begets a quest, the interpretation of certain signs in existence that lead to the decision to ask for baptism ... What is striking is that “conversion” at this point is synonymous with “belief ”. This strength of conviction which entails the experience of conversion can also bring un ‑ comfortable experiences to companions who are interrogated about their own way of living the faith. The most commonly heard sentence in response to these stories is: “Oh, me, you know, I got into it when I was young.” Still by way of introduction, I would like to quote an article from the French daily newspaper La Croix 1 published a few years ago, the title was “Conversion, a work of a lifetime.” It read: “In addition to the first meeting – sometimes sudden, even brutal – with Christ, conversion is always a step by step path, a journey after the one that was recognized as Lord.” And also: “The interior change – also referred to as a “change of heart” – can be sudden, even brutal ... but it can also be done in stages, it can take the form of a progressive awareness of the inherent sinfulness, then a decision to welcome grace.” The authors added: “There are as many conversions as there are converted persons.” This article thus gave three keys to understanding conversion: conversion as an event, conversion as a path with successive steps, and the diversity of conversion experiences. We cannot but reduce conversion to these three aspects. As the theme of our congress states, conversion is an act that involves a process that requires support. But we can already note the complexity of this phenomenon. Conversion as a phenomenon after all was poorly analysed as such in catechetical theology. Yet, if catechesis is understood and inspired today from the model of the catechumenate, and therefore is seen as an initiation, it cannot ignore the moment of conversion as one of the essential elements of adhering to the faith. Asking questions and analysing conversion from experience then unlocks a large number of issues. Indeed, many are the issues raised. For example: should we oppose conversion as an event, sudden conversion, and conversion understood as a process? Is it possible to objectify conversion knowing that this is a highly personal experience? The fact that anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists attempt at objectifying conversion regardless of the actual content of conversion stories, thus eliminating God, is this not in itself problematic? ... Before we ourselves work with conversion accounts, I offer four points to try to help you understand conversion to the Christian faith better. My first point will concern the approaches to conversion in the humanities; then, I will propose a theological approach. I will devote my third point to the relationship between conversion, the catechumenal model and catechesis. Finally, my fourth point will more directly introduce our work around the conversion stories.

Authors and Affiliations

Roland Lacroix

Keywords

Migration: Dangers and Opportunities for the Family in the Light of John Paul II’s Messages for World Migrant Day

The phenomenon of migration has become a subject of numerous sociological, economic and political analyses. It has also become an issue of interest for Catholic Social Teaching. The complexity of this subject, its top...

EEC, Congress of Celje, 27 th May – 1st June 1, 2015 Conversion. The Act, the Process and Accompaniment Stories of conversion in the first centuries of the church. What is conversion?

Looking for the sources of conversion in the first centuries of the Church is not a simple process: the study is wide ranging from the process of conversion in the ancient world – long and varied – to personal narr...

EP ID EP183499
DOI 10.15633/pch.1902
Views 92
Downloads 0