As I was attending the national conference on RCIA this past week in Chicago, conversion was a popular topic of discussion, since conversion, metanoia, and transformation are concepts we use to talk about the RCIA process of adults preparing to enter our Catholic faith. In dramatic conversions, sometime the person transformed takes a new name. We heard last Friday at the daily mass from the 17th chapter of Genesis, Abram becomes Abraham after he is transformed by the covenant God makes with him and the promise to make Abraham and his descendants God’s chosen people. Today, we hear about the ebb and flow of Abraham and his descendants: of the death of his wife Sarah and of his son Isaac starting his own family. In thinking about how Abram took a new name after his conversion and transformation, I thought about how nuns and monks traditionally took new names after taking their religious vows, showing their transition to this new life as a member of a religious congregation. Another type of conversion we spoke about at the conference is the believe leaving behind everything in his old life to start a new life in following Christ. Matthew is a tax collector, a hated profession in Ancient Israel, since tax collectors were seen as collaborating with the occupying foreign government in their country. But, Jesus saw something in Matthew, he saw potential, so he called him to a life of discipleship. In conversion, we are called out of our old life into a new life in Christ: from darkness into light, from fear into belief, from blindness into sight, from complacency into action, from stagnation into new growth, from our own desires to God’s will for us. May all of us be open to transformation, conversion, and renewal. I think a lot of times, we that the process of transformation and conversion reaches completion in our lives, but it certainly. God will always be at work in us if we allow him room in our lives.
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