[stephenkhoo]

Wednesday, 20 February, 2013, 1st Week of Lent
MOTIVE FOR CONVERSION

SCRIPTURE READINGS: JON 3:1-10; LK 11:29-32

Lent is an invitation to new life. Hence, the call to conversion is the fundamental theme of Lent. We began the season of Lent with Jesus’ call to repentance, “Repent and believe in the Good News.” St Paul similarly invites us to be reconciled with God. Without repentance, we cannot receive the fullness of life and enter into God’s kingdom, since His kingdom is His reign in us. Without repentance, we remain outside the kingdom. That is why when Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe in the Good News” (Mk 1:15), He was saying that it is near to us only if we repent and turn towards the Good News.

But are we ready for conversion? Perhaps the truth is that we are like the Israelites in today’s first reading and the Jews during the time of Jesus. We are not yet ready for conversion. For this reason, they avoided the issue by asking Jesus for a sign. This caused Jesus to rebut them saying, “This is an evil age. It seeks a sign.” We only pay lip service. All we are obsessed about during the season of Lent is that we have to do penance and mortification. This seems to be the only concern of ours; not whether we radically change our lifestyles. We feel justified when we do our fair share of penance, prayers and almsgiving. But we do not seek a radical conversion.

We pretend to seek for clearer signs for our conversion. But no signs can ever change us at all. This is what Jesus wants us to realize. Why is that so?

Why are we like the Israelites, unable to hear the message of conversion? Why are we like the Jews, unwilling to acknowledge the truth about ourselves?

The first reason is that we are not utterly convinced that the Good News is really good. Many of us have no foretaste of the Good News and so we do not know exactly what it is like. We might therefore feel unprepared to sacrifice what we already have for something that we are uncertain of. If we believe that the Good News is so good, then like the parable of the merchant who found the pearl in the field, we would have sold everything to buy it. (cf Mt 14:45). But we are afraid of placing our chips on a wrong bet, so better to have a bird in hand than two in the bush. Isn’t this the case? When we invite people to go for a retreat, their first reaction is, “Wah, so many days? I don’t have the time to go for such long retreats. I don’t have so many days of leave, etc.” But if we offer them a free holiday to some exotic place even for two weeks, let us see if they will not immediately find the time! At any rate, since we are not sure of what we are going to get when we enter the Kingdom of God, we are quite contented to settle for whatever little happiness and joy we have here, even if it were not the best.

Secondly, we are spiritually weak. The spirit might be willing but the flesh is weak. Although we might desire to have a perfect figure for our body, to be in tip top health, yet we succumb to unhealthy food and drinks. We cannot resist the pleasures of the world. Although we want to keep ourselves chaste, we fall into sexual sins because it is always so tempting. Although we want to pray, we never get to doing it as there is always something more important to do, or rather, more interesting to do than to sit and doing nothing, talking to some abstract being. So we end up doing work, catching up with friends and sleeping. So goodwill alone cannot bring about conversion of heart. If we cannot even overcome temptation to the things of this world, how can we be strong enough to seek the discipline of a Christian life? Our body still is very much attached to the world, even if our spirit also longs for God. We need to feel love in the body, not just in the spirit. So, spiritual things are not so attractive for us. Should we be surprised, since St Paul wrote, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14)

Thirdly, we are ignorant. We do not know what is truly good or even evil. The world is rather complex today. Morality is no longer black or white. The trend towards individualism and relativism make it difficult for us to discern the right thing to do, even though the answer is spelt out in the bible. We find many teachings in the bible unacceptable in today’s life, whether it concerns sex, marriage, divorce, entertainment, food or lifestyle. We are so confused with so many opinions, with their arguments, that often we are crippled into making any decision.

In the final analysis, it is simply because we lack faith. The key to enter the Kingdom of God is to believe. Isn’t this what Jesus is asking of us? He was disappointed with His fellow Jews who were asking for signs before they would believe Him. When the Jews asked Jesus for a sign, it was not because they wanted to believe in Him. Indeed, Jesus had already given more than sufficient signs, in His miracles, works of healing and compassion, eating and drinking with sinners, welcoming all sinners, raising the dead, etc. What they needed were not more signs but faith. They were simply postponing belief, or rather, finding reasons not to believe, just like us all. Signs at best remain signs. Faith supplies the meaning to the signs.

We, too, try to justify the way we live our lives. We have no intention of changing. When we read the bible, we try to compromise its teachings to suit our lifestyles, such as a homosexual lifestyle, extra-marital affairs, pre-marital sex, pilfering things from the office, etc. So apparently, we want to change, but deep within us we are hardly convinced that we should. All these requests for signs and clarifications are merely whitewash, vain attempts in the hope that we will find some justifications to salve our conscience. Some of us read in order to find loopholes in the Church’s doctrinal and moral teachings so that we can exempt ourselves from submitting to them.

In today’s first reading, we have the example of the people of Nineveh. They were the most unexpected people to repent and convert. Jonah, the self-righteous prophet, refused initially to go to proclaim conversion at Nineveh because he suspected that they would change their lives. He wanted them to be punished by God as prophesied. But they repented. “And the people of Nineveh believed in God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least.” Not only did the people immediately repent at the preaching of Jonah, but even the King repented! “The news reached the king of Nineveh, who rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth and sat down in ashes.” They did not rationalize or try to give excuses even though they were pagans. But they accepted the Word of God as it really is and hence became a living power for those who believed. (cf. 1 Th 2:13)

Hence, Jesus told the Jews that the only sign that would be given was that of Jonah. The irony is that the pagans were more receptive to the call of the prophets for conversion than the Israelites. The irony is that after the death of Jesus, the gospel reached the whole world to the Gentiles, but His fellow Jews rejected Him. How true for us all! The most unlikely people who seem to be ready for conversion are the real big sinners, not the so-called good, practicing Catholics. Those ordinary Catholics and active ones in Church are the most difficult people to convert. This is not unexpected because those who rejected Jesus were the so-called religious leaders and Jews of the day, not the sinners and the marginalized. Hence, the warning of Jesus to them applies to us as well, “On Judgement day the Queen of the South will rise up with the men of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and there is something greater than Solomon here. On Judgement day the men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation and condemn it, because when Jonah preached they repented; and there is something greater than Jonah here.”

Let us ask for the grace of repentance, for a sincere and contrite heart that the responsorial psalm spoke about. Conversion is ultimately the gift of the Holy Spirit. We pray that God will soften our hardened hearts and enlighten our minds to come to know the Good News, that is, the unconditional love of God for us in Christ Jesus. Without this encounter with the Lord, the Good News remain as old news, since it only demands that we live a moral life but does not give us the power and incentive to do so. But a personal encounter with the Good News, not as a doctrine or a moral teaching but as a person, will transform the Good News to flesh for us, to behold, to touch and be touched, to love and be loved.