Metanoia

31st Week in Ordinary Time - Thursday (8 November 2018)

Philippians 3:3-8

Luke 15:1-10

“There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine virtuous persons who have no need of repentance.”

Today's gospel reading narrates that our Master kept company and ate with tax collectors and sinners. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” A scandalous act by him. Socially unacceptable.

What does this tell of Jesus? His love and compassion has no boundaries. There are no divisions in God's heart. All of us are his children. His love does not depend on our worthiness. Sinner or virtuous we are His Beloved. The social identities or divisions have no say in God's view. Everyone is equally loved, everyone is equal in God's eyes. It's only we who make all discriminations. Even the above quoted verse that there will be rejoicing in heaven does not show that God has favourites, but all are accepted equally by God.

The Greek word metanoia has been poorly translated as "repentance" in the Bible. It quite literally means "to change your mind." Until the mind changes the very way it processes the moment, nothing really changes long term. "Be transformed by a renewal of your mind," Paul says (Romans 12:2), which hopefully will allow the heart to soon follow. Jesus teaches us the art of metanoia, or “going into the larger mind.” This may be a better understanding of metanoia: beyond (meta) the mind (nous) and into the heart. Conversion is about operating from the heart and not from the mind. In fact, underlying all Jesus' teaching is a clarion call to a radical shift in consciousness. It is an invitation to a transformation of consciousness. Instead of operating from our egos, our Lord is inviting us to live from our hearts. Only then can we understand the universe of divine abundance. (Perhaps only this way we can understand, as Alan Watts affirms, that the primary concern of the Bible is mystical, not moral.)

Very often it is our mind that gets into the job of alienation, comparison, judging, condemnation and polarization. Every now and then when we are tempted to put down someone or judge someone, let us try to perceive the situation or the person through the heart and not with the head. Only our heart can show what is really real; and only then can we stop our political games of Us and Them, Good and Bad, Sin and Virtue, Right and Wrong, Leftist and Rightist, Acceptable and Unacceptable, Moral and Immoral.

For most of us, conversion is not a one-time event; it happens again and again throughout our lives at ever new levels of insight. It seems to be a daily event. True conversion never stops. To repeat, conversion really means a transformation of consciousness. It takes time. It takes much of our life. We need to pray for this vision in life—to see how God sees. We cannot convert ourselves; we can only be converted and transformed by grace. Let us allow grace to transform us inside out.

Transformed people transform people. The world needs transformed people, not just people with all the answers!