IT'S EITHER "ALL AT ONCE" OR AN "EXTENDED PROCESS"

 

Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man once grown old be born again? Surely, he cannot reenter his mother's womb and be born again, can he?"

John 3:1-8

Are you saved? Have you been “born again?’ Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior? If you really want to make a Catholic squirm and sweat and doubt their religious upbringing, just corner one and rattle off that set of questions!  

 

When I worked in the Bible Belt, down in the southern part of the state, Catholics, including myself, were often bombarded with those questions. More than one Catholic was left confused and bewildered. Their counterparts could date the precise hour they were “saved,” while Catholics stood there puzzled and confused. 

 

Today’s gospel gives us a perfect opportunity to talk about these questions. To be “born again,” does one have to have dramatic, certain and dated experience or can one grow toward God in an extended process, sometimes without a clear beginning and end?

 

 Many of our fundamentalist brothers and sisters look to the Apostle Paul as their hero and ideal. His conversion experience was dramatic and decisive. It was a shattering, clearly memorable confrontation with the person of Christ on the road to Damascus when he was on his way to hunt down Christians and kill them. After this dramatic u-turn in his life, he fanatically embraced and defended what he had recently persecuted and attacked. His conversion experience was so dramatic that the story is retold three times in the Acts of the Apostles and referred to three more times in various New Testament Letters. 

 

Paul’s emphasis on personal-individual faith, his emphasis on a dateable dramatic decision and evangelistic zeal have become the prototype and model of Christian conversion, especially for fundamentalist groups.

 

Roman Catholics, while respecting Paul’s experience, look to the Apostle Peter as their hero and model. Peter’s experience was very different. In one gospel passage, Peter does in fact make his profession of faith, but like many of us, it is the climax of a long and gradual insight into who Jesus was.

 

Even though some would like to suggest that everybody has to have a definite conversion experience that can be dated, the New Testament does not suggest a single stereotype for an authentic Christian conversion experience. Nicodemus, for example, who triggered the discussion with Jesus about what it means to be “born again” is an ambiguous illustration of conversion. We do not know whether Jesus persuaded Nicodemus or not. All we know is that he turned up to help out at the burial.

 

Roman Catholics have often dismissed as silly emotionalism the dramatic and decisive conversions of fundamentalists, while fundamentalists have often dismissed the long and gradual conversions of Catholic believers. The fact is, the church has always welcomed both kinds of conversion experiences.

 

 GIVEN AT LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR ST. JOSEPH HOME 4-28-2025