– Brought to you by Fr. Bernardino Andrade
When Comedian Yakov Smirnoff first came to the United States from Russia he was not prepared for the incredible variety of instant products available in American grocery stores. He says: «On my first shopping trip, I saw powdered milk; you just add water, and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice; you just add water, and you get orange juice. And then I saw baby powder, and I thought to my self, ‘What a country!’»
Smirnoff was joking, but we make these assumptions about Christian Transformation – that people change instantly from sinners to saints. Catholics call it transformation through repentance and renewal of life, deriving strength through the word of God and the Sacraments to cooperate with God’s grace for doing acts of charity. Some other Christian denominations call it Sanctification of the believer. Whatever you call it, most denominations expect some quick fix for sin.
According to this belief, when someone gives his or her life to Christ, accepting Him as Lord and personal Savior, and confesses his or her sins to Him, there is an immediate, substantive, in-depth, miraculous change in habits, attitudes, and character. Can we go to Church as if we are going to the grocery store to get Powdered Christian?
I had a wonderful friend in California who was a real saint. Reverend Bill was the Pastor of a huge Baptist Church. One day when we were sharing our lives and experiences with each other, he said that he was enjoying reading the books of Henry Nouwen, a Belgian Catholic priest who impacted tremendously the spirituality of the 20th century, especially with his book «The Return of the Prodigal Son». Rev. Bill was enjoying and was getting a lot from his writings. But he was a little surprised with a little difference between Nouwen’s spirituality and the Protestant spirituality. Nouwen repeated very often the word «conversion» to happen during a spiritual journey of a Christian.
According to him conversion happens in the moment we choose Jesus as our personal Savior, and since then we live accordingly. Then I remembered St. Paul in his letter to the Romans (Rom 7:14) when he says: «What I want to do, that I do not do; but what I hate, that I do». He was always struggling between sin, temptation and his conversion. Louis Evely says that the most difficult people to convert are Christians to Christ. Father Aires Gameiro told me recently that the followers of Jesus are always in the ABC (we are all like beginners… like ABC are the first letters of the alphabet). This is the meaning of conversion.
The truth is that Disciples of Christ are not born by adding water to Christian powder. There is no such powder, and disciples of Jesus Christ are not instantly born. They are slowly raised through many trials, suffering, and temptations and by their active cooperation with the grace of God, expressed through works of charity.
Love and Peace
Fr. Bernardino Andrade
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