Many people, even many religious people, are convinced that the difficult experiences in
their lives are some form of punishment. When Jesus was told about the Galileans who
had been killed by Pilate, He asked whether those Galileans or the eighteen people,
upon whom a tower fell at Siloam, were greater sinners than others? He definitively
asserted, “No!”
At the same time, Jesus warns His listeners, “Unless you repent you will all likewise
perish” (Lk 13:5). Jesus isn’t threatening His listeners with tragic deaths but with tragic
lives, lives that miss the relationship that God is offering them.
No matter what our religious status or previous experience of devotion or service, we
stand before God as we are now. In our second reading, Paul reminds the Corinthians
that, even though the Israelites escaped all sorts of dangers in the wilderness through
God’s help, ultimately God rejected them for their lack of response.
Paul asserts “I want you to remember this,” (1 Cor 10:1), as he recalls how the
Israelites, leaving Egypt, passed though the sea, led by the cloud, ate the “spiritual
food,” manna, and drank from the water that flowed miraculously from the rock.
Yet, “God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert”
(1 Cor 10:6). Paul affirms that this is a “warning to us,” that is to Baptized Christians
who eat the “spiritual food,” the Eucharist, but do not change their hearts.
We have areas of our lives that we need to change. We need to convert, to turn around.
Like the fig tree in today’s Gospel, we are given life to produce fruit (Lk 13:6-9). True,
the account of the good thief who turned to Jesus on the Cross shows that it is never
too late to ask for mercy and receive it (Lk 23:42). Nevertheless, death often comes with
little warning. Paul insists: “Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation” (2
Cor 6:2).
The readings are calls to conversion, which is surely appropriate for the season of Lent.
Many of us have repeated the same faults many times. Can we possibly change these
well-established habits?
Is change possible? Can we resist our long-standing habits? True our best efforts are
needed but without God’s assistance, we will soon fall back.
Whatever we do, we do for some sort of happiness, although the happiness of some of
our behaviors actually are short term. St. Thomas Aquinas calls attention to the
teaching of Aristotle that there is a natural happiness that comes from consideration of
God: “Man’s ultimate happiness consists in his most perfect contemplation, whereby in
this life he can behold the best intelligible object; and that is God” (3a. 62, 1).

Thomas explains that we need to go further beyond the contemplation of the
philosophers to Christian contemplation, “Above this happiness there is still another,
which we look forward to in the future, whereby ‘we shall see God as He is.’” Thomas
points out: “This is beyond the nature of every created intellect” (3a. 62, 1).
How do we go beyond our nature? Thomas responds: “The natural movement of the will
is the principle of all things that we do. But the will’s natural inclination is directed
towards what is in keeping with its nature. Therefore, if there is anything which is above
nature, the will cannot be inclined towards it, unless helped by some other supernatural
principle” (3a. 62, 2).
How can we will or want what is beyond our natural condition? Thomas explains:
“Consequently no rational creature can have the movement of the will directed towards
such beatitude, except it be moved by a supernatural agent. This is what we call the
help of grace” (3a. 62, 2).
For Thomas, this is conversion: “Every movement of the will towards God can be
termed a conversion to God” (3a. 62, 2, ad 3).
Thomas understands the highest form of conversion is when the person is united with
God in heaven. For this, Thomas affirms, “consummate grace is required.” During one’s
earthly life, “turning to God” needs habitual grace, in other words, we are constantly
supported by grace.
Even those who have not been living in grace are offered the grace to turn to God. God,
draws the soul towards Himself, according to Lamentations 5:21: “Convert us, O Lord,
to You, and we shall be converted’” (3a. 62, 2, ad 3).
Whenever we turn to God, God has moved us: “We must presuppose a gratuitous gift of
God, Who moves the soul inwardly or inspires the good wish … we need the Divine
assistance” (1a2ae. 109, 6).
Thomas recalls that Dionysius, (probably a Syrian monk around 500), says that “God
turns all to Himself.”
Thomas comments: “But He directs righteous men to Himself as to a special end, which
they seek, and to which they wish to cling, according to Ps. 72:28, ‘it is good for me to
adhere to my God” (1a2ae. 109, 6)
Thomas insists that we don’t turn to God and then God responds to us: “And that they
are ‘turned’ to God can only spring from God’s having ‘turned’ them. Now to prepare
oneself for grace is, as it were, to be turned to God; just as, whoever has his eyes
turned away from the light of the sun, prepares himself to receive the sun’s light, by
turning his eyes towards the sun. Hence it is clear that man cannot prepare himself to
receive the light of grace except by the gratuitous help of God moving him inwardly”
(1a2ae. 109, 6)

“Man’s turning to God is by free-will; and thus man is bidden to turn himself to God. But
free-will can only be turned to God, when God turns it, according to Jer. 31:18: ‘Convert
me and I shall be converted, for Thou art the Lord, my God’; and Lam. 5:21: ‘Convert
us, O Lord, to Thee, and we shall be converted’ (1a. 2ae. 109, 6, ad 1)
The first step in our conversion is to ask for grace to move us, although God is already
moving us if we are asking for His grace.
Denis Vincent Wiseman, O.P.

References to the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas give the part of the
Summa, the question and the article. If the passage is found in a response to an
objection that Thomas has introduced in the first part of the article, the Latin word “ad,”
meaning “to,” is added with the number of the objection.