Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [18]
Thus, we suffer the world of Christ to penetrate us with its light only so far as it does not interfere with our safe residence in that putative “home.” There is also the danger of attempting so to redraw and to humanize the face of Christ that it may fit into the features of that home.
Many such humanizations and sentimental falsifications are to be found in so-called popular piety, and are expressed even in certain hymns. We must have the readiness to relinquish such all-too-human substitutes, however comfortable we may feel them. We must be filled with the desire to look into the unfalsified countenance of Christ as shown by the Church in her liturgy. We must long to be lifted by Christ into His world, not try to drag Him down into ours. Whatever is of genuine value and appropriate to His world we shall receive back from Him transfigured and resplendent with a new light.
Readiness to change is the core of our response to God
On the measure of our readiness to change depends the measure of our transformation in Christ. Unreserved readiness is an indispensable precondition of the conception of Christ in our souls and it must endure with undiminished vigor all along the path of our transformation. Beyond that, however, as we have seen, it constitutes a central response to Revelation, to God’s epiphany in Christ, and to the call He has issued to us; and therefore, a high virtue by itself.
The significance and the value of such an attitude also appear from the fact that the better a man’s inward condition and the more he feels touched by God the wider the doors of his heart will be opened and the readier he will show himself for being changed. Whenever, on the contrary, some baser impulse gets the upper hand in a man’s soul, he will shut himself up, and the doors will close again. He will harden and attempt to maintain himself.
There is a deep nexus between a kind, unrestrained attitude in general, and the state of fluidity, openness, and receptivity to formative action from above. Still more is the act of free inward surrender to God inseparable from that state of fluidity and receptivity; whereas, by bolting ourselves up and entrenching ourselves in our nature we stifle in our souls the growth of the germs implanted by God, and an opposition to higher appeals will consequently arise in all domains.
The readiness to change is an essential aspect of the Christian’s basic relation with God; it forms the core of our response to the merciful love of God which bends down upon us: “With eternal charity hath God loved us; so He hath drawn us, lifted from the earth, to His merciful heart” (Antiphon of Praise, Feast of the Sacred Heart). To us all has the inexorable yet beatifying call of Christ been addressed: Sequere me (“Follow Me”). Nor do we follow it unless, relinquishing everything, we say with St. Paul: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6).
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Contrition
THE initial step of the soul’s meeting with God bears the mark of contrition. The man whose heart is smitten by the word of Christ, whom Jesus’ face has brought to his knees, will at first say with St. Peter: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). Confrontation of our own selves with God renders us conscious of our unworthiness and sinfulness.
That consciousness of sin fills us with pain: the guilt we have incurred burns our souls. Thus, with a contrite heart we fall on our knees before God, exclaiming: “To Thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before Thee,”
It is in repenting our sins that we expressly repudiate evil, and revert to God. By the same token we also experience our sin turning in enmity against us: “My sin is always against me” (Ps. 50:5). Without this basic revocation of our offenses against God there can be no genuine