Conversion is the other word we attach to Saint Augustine. He entered the Catholic Church at age thirty-two. It was due to his conversion we still remember him even though it took years. Augustine left behind a long life of sin and embraced a life of grace. Not only did he convert to Catholicism, he later became a priest and a bishop. He is now a saint and a doctor of the church.
Likewise, conversion in our own personal lives doesn’t happen only once and for all. We recall that Augustine went through a series of conversions after that first powerful one. He advanced in the faith, step by step. Initially, he knew the faith, but it took him a while to actually accept it with his will and heart and to respond. God’s call always waits for our response. A conversion can occur, and we turn our lives over to Him, as did Augustine, but the call doesn’t stop there.
We’re not meant to keep only at the first step. God wants more. He sees our potential for doing good, for bringing His life into the lives of others; he sees our potential holiness. We, too, desire more of God the more we know Him. We long to widen and deepen the knowledge of the things of God with our minds, and to grow in charity in our hearts and souls.
We hope for a will that is mighty enough to be grafted onto and into the very will of God. So conversion is a life-long process where we enter into God’s life, and use those graces to continually draw closer to Him. We need to prepare to surrender. We need to re-evaluate our priorities in this life, which means allowing God to lead, initiate, and guide us through these steps of conversion, change, of response.
St. Augustine could make big changes in his thinking, in his behavior, and in his response to the challenges of his conversion. Challenges are offered to us, too, to keep us from becoming too lax, too soft, too self-absorbed. Challenges to meet the requirements of conversion are like exercises in the spiritual realm. Prayer is the power that prepares us to meet those challenges, and grace aids us in dealing with them and growing from them.
Conversion is, “putting your hands to the plow and not looking back.”
We, too, must be willing, even eager to surrender to the grace of conversion every day. We are called to conversion by surrendering our selfishness, our self-importance, and our personal world. We are called to surrender all of this of the world, the Kingdom of God. Like St. Augustine, our hearts can only truly find their rest in Thee… to rest in the heart of God, we must hand our hearts over lovingly to God Who is love. This is the response of conversion.