The Time Is Running Out to Become Like God

3rd Sunday of the Year

The last five years before I left for seminary, I managed a small business out in Towson. We ran a retail market and a wholesale company, and some days of the year brought in an incredible amount of retail sales for such a small business. What I discovered about myself during those years was that I loved preparing for the big sales days. I learned that if you planned well enough and became ruthlessly organized, you could make those big days seem no busier than the slowest day of the year. The enemy was chaos, disorder, and rushing to resolve problems that you should have predicted to happen. I still believe today that if you are in a hurry, most of the time you are in a hurry because you have not planned well enough, and you are not organized.

My employer came up to me on one of those busiest days of the year and told me he was upset because I did not seem to be in a hurry. I told him that no one needed to be in a hurry because we had a good plan for the day, we were organized and disciplined, and we were executing—the day was going great. He told me that when you look casual and relaxed on an important day, how you look reveals that the day really isn’t that important to you. You need to look busy, he said, because looking busy means that you are busy, and being busy means that something important is happening. He did not want me to become less organized, less disciplined, more disordered, running around in a hurry to resolve problems because we lacked a good plan. He simply wanted me to act with urgency, to perform my work quickly and intentionally as though the work mattered so much that not a second could be wasted in its accomplishment.

Here is the lesson: there is a difference between being in a hurry and acting with urgency, and our readings today make that lesson clear to us. God wants us to act with urgency in the ways of conversion.

I think the one clarification we need to make from the start is to give ourselves a definition of the term ‘conversion.’ We hear the word ‘conversion’ and most of us usually think of vices and sin— actions that we perform that separate us from God. Conversion is a matter of stopping the performance of those actions. The person who wants conversion needs to identify the sin in their life and cut it out.

There is no doubt that conversion requires cutting out the vices and sin that separate us from God. But I think that conversion is a word that means much more for us. Wholehearted conversion is not just a matter of cutting out the sin that separates us from God. Conversion is also about performing the kinds of actions that make us like God. St. Athanasius said that in Christ, God became man so that man might become God. The default goal we have in mind when it comes to the Christian life is usually something like ‘union with God.’ What we want is perfect union with God. The saving work of Christ makes union with God possible for us, heaven is living in perfect union with God forever, and sin is what separates us from God.

The default goal is not wrong—we really should want perfect and eternal union with God—but it leaves out the fact that to live in union with someone is to become like them. You all know from your own experiences the truth of this reality. You get to really know someone, to really live in an active relationship with them, and you start to pick up on some of their qualities. If you live in a close relationship with a very good person, you almost inevitably become a better person yourself because the goodness that is in them becomes active and present in your life. The goal of the Christian life is eternal union with God, but that kind of union in our lives means that we are becoming more like God.

What does that mean, to become more like God? We know the answer: to become more like Christ because Christ is God. To become more like Christ is the real life of conversion. And the life that Christ lives is more than a life that is free from the sin that would separate him from the Father. The life of Christ is also a life of wholehearted faith, hope, and love. These supernatural virtues that define the life of Christ are given to us at baptism so that genuine, complete conversion of heart and mind might become possible for us in life. Imagine the faith of Christ in Gethsemane, or the hope of Christ on the Cross, or the love of Christ revealed the forgiveness and mercy extended to the worst of sinners—that is the kind of life that baptism makes possible for us and the life of authentic conversion is about getting the job done.

Alright, now we have a good definition of conversion: conversion is becoming more like Christ, to put on the mind of Christ, as St. Paul describes our lives, and to live like Christ is to live in freedom from sin and to live a life of wholehearted faith, hope, and love. Let me give a little more detail: faith is a matter of knowing God and trusting completely in the will of God, hope is a matter of knowing with complete confidence that there is a plan for your life and the life of the world and that the plans of God will come to fulfillment, and love is a matter making every single person you meet in life more important than yourself. The life of conversion means pursuing a life of freedom from fear and anxiety and anger and sorrow and resentment and envy in your life because you know God and trust God and like Christ you lower yourself and make yourself less important and act from mercy and forgiveness and love in all times and circumstances.

Now, back to the readings for today: God wants us to act with urgency in the ways of conversion.

What I want to say is that you can pursue the living of an ordered, organized, and disciplined life and yet fail to act with urgency in the ways of conversion. I really do think that a sign of a well-ordered life is that you are never in a hurry—you know what matters, you have put your plan together, and you are executing. But you can create a good plan for your life and become invested in what is most good and true and beautiful about reality and yet make your life into something ordinary, typical, routine. When you think of conversion only as a matter of not sinning and not making choices and not performing actions that separate you from God, conversion can fit nicely into just about any decent life lived in the world.

The problem is that the time is running out, says St. Paul, and the world in its present form is passing away, and so there is only so long we have in life to become like God. Becoming more like God is what conversion means and we do not even possess the guarantee of the 40 days given to the people of Nineveh for their conversion. The world in its present form is passing away and we need to act with urgency in the ways of conversion. And conversion is a matter of becoming more like God, more like Christ, more faith, more hope, more love, less anxiety, less fear, less anger, less sorrow, less resentment, less envy, more knowing God, more trusting God, more lowering ourselves, more making ourselves less important, more acting from mercy, more forgiveness, more love in all times and circumstances.

That kind of life does not fit as nicely into a decent life lived in the world because that kind of life recognizes that the world in its present form is passing away. I want to conclude by saying that if Christ is real and true—if God really did become a human being so that we might become more like God—then the possibilities for our lives are overwhelming, and well beyond our ability to make sense of them; life is a remarkable gift to us. So, what we are confronted with is a choice about our desires in conflict with the reality of a finite existence in a finite world: is what we want the most to become like God, and do we recognize that neither our lives nor the life of the world will endure forever? The time is running out, and if we want to become more like God, we need to act with urgency—to perform the work of faith and hope and love quickly and intentionally as though our work mattered so much that not a second could be wasted in its accomplishment.

Homily preached Sunday, January 21st at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary