The Word of God deals with the subject of conversion in today’s readings. Conversion is certainly not a one-sided process. God does not simply wait patiently for us to repent one day of our sins. The threats of the Old Testament prophets were delivered in order to provoke swifter conversion. God “repents,” of the evil He threatened to commit when the people repent. Fear issues from our conscience when we face the threat of punishment. There are consequences for our actions, and God does not want to us to forget that the eternal consequences are far more important than the temporal ones. Indeed, there are no discernable temporal consequences of a refusal to listen to God’s Word. Conversion is certainly the free and willing change that takes place in the mind and heart of a sinner. Conversion is more importantly a change of mind and heart about the Word of God. This Word can come to us from unexpected places, it can catch us by surprise, it can challenge us and condemn us. Most importantly, this Word can save us. The goal of conversion is salvation, healing, liberation, and illumination: all of these take place in the heart of someone who believes in the Word of God.
Saint Alphonsus Liguori
GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS:
Such is our life, we whose existence is so transitory. Such is the game we play on earth. We do not exist, and we are born, and being born, we disintegrate and disappear. We are a fleeting dream, an apparition without substance, the flight of a bird that passes, a ship that leaves no trace on the sea. We are dust, a vapor, the morning dew, a flower growing but a moment and withering in a moment. “A person’s days are as grass. As the flower of the field, so shall he flourish,” beautifully, as described by holy David in meditating on our weakness. And again in these words: “Declare to me the fewness of my days.” And he defines the days of people as the measure of a span. What would you say to Jeremiah, who, complaining about his birth, even blames his mother, and that, too, for the failings of others. I have seen all things, says the Preacher, I have reviewed in thought all human things, wealth, pleasure, power, unstable glory, wisdom that evades us rather than is won; then pleasure again, wisdom again, often revolving the same objects, the pleasures of appetite, orchards, numbers of slaves, store of wealth, serving men and serving maids, singing men and singing women, arms, spearmen, subject nations, collected tributes, the pride of kings, all the necessaries and superfluities of life, in which I surpassed all the kings that were before me. And what does he say after all these things? Vanity of vanities.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola
THEODORET OF CYR:
And blessed Daniel the prophet, the divine Ezekiel (who was both prophet and priest) and many other priests in addition to them shared in these misfortunes. For God provided for those profane exiles and sent along also prophets that could be pedagogues and teachers so that the exiles might not incline entirely to godlessness.
JEROME:
We should not think that the glorious throne of God is only the throne of the temple, which was repeatedly destroyed, but that it is also every saint who is cast down and destroyed when he offends God by his multitude of sins, according to what is written: “You have cast his throne to the ground.” Nevertheless, the one who perishes from his own guilt is sustained by the clemency of the Lord, whereby the severity of the sentence is altered, lest the Lord invalidate his covenant in which he promised to be our coming salvation.