The Grace of Conversion

By Scott Ferrier, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

In every human consciousness, there exists a sense of innate justice — “the way things should be.” But, at the same time, our experience of reality often lacks this unity and perfection we long for and that we sense should be there. Every person desires happiness. But what we’ve chosen often brings neither peace nor contentment. Instead, we become more restless. 

A profound and permanent dislocation affects us: a discordia, a ‘tension,’ that strives, however perversely, to seek resolution in some balanced whole, in some concordia. We may choose what is sinful, thinking we will feel more “whole.” Saint Augustine explained this so well in his Confessions (Bk. 9), by analyzing why he chose vice rather than virtue. We are free to choose, but when we’ve chosen something evil or even a good with the wrong intentions, it results in dissatisfaction, sadness and anguish. Only in the good that is God’s will can we find peace. “This is God’s will for you, your sanctification” (1 Thess 4.3).

Revelation explains this ‘discordia’ in Genesis. What was the main result of sin? The realization of being naked: “they knew that they were naked.” Adam and Eve’s reaction was to dress themselves: “and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin-cloths.” Man is a being who, lacking the fullness of being (grace), tries to adorn himself— much more than to dress himself. He tries to appear as someone of importance, to appear better than he is. His underlying ‘sense’ that he lacks a goodness he should have, impels him to surrender to an ‘apparent’ good which is sinful. Ashamed and afraid, he then seeks to avoid or hide from the Lord God Whom man knows is seeking him.

God created humanity in His image, placing an ineffaceable mark on the soul. Though this image was disfigured with original sin and our personal sins, every person has a capacity for God (capax Dei). But this capacity is diverted when we have turned away from Him. Self-love craves the transitory, created things. Augustine famously described this continuous discord or conflict as “living in the land of unlikeness.” In exile from Paradise, the perversity of the will in our choices is the source of humanity’s woes. But Christ goes before us with His Cross, and leads us back to the Father.

When I call out to the Lord in prayer, acknowledging my defects, my humiliations, the disorder in my life, all of my sins and failures —this turning back to God draws down His mercy, His compassion, for He knows what is in man (Jn 2.25). And with the gift of God’s mercy comes the grace of conversion, giving us His peace.