“In those days John the Baptist appeared. He preached in the wilderness of Judea and this was his message: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is close at hand!” (From Sunday’s Gospel of Matthew 3:1-12)
Matthew’s portrait of John the Baptist is one of a stern preacher, an untiring voice of repentance. The conversion called for in the gospel by John the Baptist and, immediately after him, by Jesus, consists in a completer reversal of our lifestyle. (See the same message, as above, when Jesus began to preach in Mt.4:17) It means putting God, rather than self or any other earthly thing, at the center of our life; of making his Word the measure of all our thoughts and actions.
The great sin into which the Pharisees and Sadducees had fallen was exactly that of not having given God his rightful place, easily confusing with their own interpretations what it was that he was actually asking. For example, they placed more importance on all the outward display of religion and it's cult (ritual ablutions, Temple sacrifices, rigorous observance of the Sabbath rest…) than on what God wanted, especially the love of neighbor and service of others. Jesus was to emphasize even more clearly that the will of God consists in a special way, in this: bring forth fruit, then that is worthy of repentance. ..to give God first place, to put him, at the center of one’s life.
In our day, in the triumphs of science as its starting point, there is a belief that scientific and technological progress will increase our ability to reach the point of resolving all our problems and mastering the universe by ourselves. In our times the greatest sin is believing itself to be self-sufficient. So for many people, repentance means accepting or re-accepting God in their lives.
Another way of evading God for those who do believe is not knowing how to, or not wanting to, draw the consequences of their faith in the concrete. The truth is that we can also see ourselves in those Pharisees and Sadducees being Christian more by inherited habits and outward practices than by deep conviction and deliberate choice of God not feeling obliged to put into practice God’s commandments, especially that of the love of neighbor. Therefore bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.
Whether we need to welcome with love Jesus into our lives where he has been excluded, or feel the need of considering his demands more seriously, or of simply renewing our choice, if only by means of particular resolutions, what matters is that we should all be converted and converted again. One thing is certain. Our world that is so wounded can only be healed by Jesus. He calls on us, his disciples, to allow him to live in us. Baptism has given us his life but our own life, freely chosen, living out of it is required: the gospel and its demands cannot be watered down. If we do this we will experience his transforming power. For all of us there is only one thing to do, let us be converted in reality, indeed.