No matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, we always have it within our power, aided by grace, to choose Christ, to conform our wills to that of the Father. That grace helps us in this we find explicitly confirmed in scripture, as St. Paul reassures the Corinthians by saying: God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but in the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it. And so temptation can never overpower us unless we consent to it, meaning that we always have it within our power, helped as we are by God, to preserve rectitude in our wills, to remain united with Father, who has united us to himself through Christ.
But then, what if we have already abandoned righteousness? What if we have already turned aside from God and gone after lesser things, what if we have already consented to and thereby fallen in the midst of temptation? This of course is not a hypothetical question, but rather represents the state in which we all inevitably find ourselves, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It is into this situation, into our situation, that our readings today speak, offering hope by showing forth the possibility of conversion.
We see this first in our first reading, where Ezekiel speaks the word of God to the exiles in Babylon, assuring them that it is not for the sins of their fathers that they will be judged, but rather that it is on the basis of their own merits and their own decisions. But crucially, what matters is not so much being perfect, understood in the sense of never making a mistake, but rather what counts is the way in which one finishes. A virtuous person who turns from virtue to wickedness will not be spared for the sake of his prior goodness, but neither will a wicked person who turns from his wickedness be condemned for his former sins. This possibility for conversion is always mercifully extended to us while we yet live, and so there is never a moment in this life which is too late for us, which fact we saw last week in the parable of the vineyard owner, who time and again called laborers into his vineyard even until the final hour, and which we most famously see in the example of the good thief.
Then too we see this same lesson on display, the same assurance of the possibility of conversion, in today’s gospel, whereby another parable Jesus confronts the chief priests and the elders precisely by this reminder: that it is not on the basis of one’s prior wickedness or virtuousness that a person is judged, but rather on whether one has, in the ultimate instance, chosen to do the Father’s will. And so the chief priests and the elders, who were in public the champions of virtue and righteousness, find themselves shut out of the kingdom of God while tax collectors and prostitutes are entering in, because while the latter have turned from their wickedness to do what is right, the former have hardened their hearts against what is right, they have hardened their hearts against Jesus and against the saving work of God. And so they have embraced wickedness, a wickedness which will reach its full flower when they conspire to put Jesus to death.
And yet, having said so much about the possibility of conversion and having had so many examples given us by the scriptures, we too often doubt on this point. We doubt the possibility of our own conversion, either because we think we have done too much evil, or else because we again and again find ourselves struggling with the same things, the same sins, seemingly making little progress. Against this temptation, a temptation to a kind of despair, I think it is good to think on the words from a late-medieval book of prayers and meditations written for the benefit of the dying:
“O man, why do you despair? Even if you had committed as many robberies, thefts, and homicides as there are drops in the sea and grains of sand on the shore, even if you alone carried the sins of the whole world, and even if you had never done penance for them, nor had ever confessed them, nor even now had the opportunity to confess them — nevertheless, you ought not to despair. For in such a case, interior contrition alone suffices. Witness the Psalm: ‘A contrite and humbled heart, O God, you will not despise.’ And Ezekiel says: ‘In whatever hour the sinner shall groan, he shall be saved.’”
And so let us not have any doubts regarding the possibility of conversion, for our sins, even if they be the greatest and most heinous of sins, are yet vanishingly small in comparison with God’s mercy, and even if we struggle with sin, so long as we continue to struggle, so long as we continue to fight and turn again and again to God seeking his mercy, then God is pleased even with our struggling.
Finally, where is it that this conversion leads us? Ultimately it leads us to Christ, it leads to the conforming of our wills to that of the Father just as Christ conformed his will to that of the Father. We may not, it is true, be able to speak of conversion in Christ in the strict sense, since Christ never sinned and thus was never separated from the Father. But we do, nevertheless, see in Christ what lies at the heart of conversion, as we see him conform his human will to the will of the Father, most especially as we contemplate his prayer in the garden. Indeed, as we heard in the great kenotic hymn of Philippians, Christ emptied himself of everything, save for doing the Father’s will, even to the point of death, and death on a cross. In doing this, Jesus shows us that this is the one necessary thing, and the thing that is of itself sufficient for us, that for which all else can and must be cast aside if needs be, and the embracing of which constitutes the positive dimension of conversion.
And so for us, if we turn from our wickedness to virtue, if we turn from following our will in order to conform our wills to that of the Father, then we will be made like unto Christ, and will therefore possess Christ, both and in this life and in the life to come, and we will be also exalted with him, who has been so greatly exalted by the Father.
“Non nisi te, Domine” – “Nothing save you, Lord.” By the help of grace St. Thomas Aquinas spoke those famous words near the end of his life, and might we ask for that that same grace so as to be of that same mind, preferring nothing at all to Christ, seeking our refuge and our rest in nothing else save him, and desiring nothing save to do the will of our heavenly Father.
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