The Importance of Repentance | May 7

It is important, for our growth, to understand that the real problem in the world is not good versus evil. In the present day, at least, this is not a problem we need to be concerned about. On the other hand, the problem we need to address is our rejection of God. This doesn’t mean evil doesn’t exist.

When we are too concerned about good versus evil, without trusting in the sacrifice of the Living God, we reject God. When we exercise our capacity to imagine and conceive the idea of God as a superhero who would destroy our enemies, we are again rejecting the Living God. It is said that “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” ( Matthew 5:45) If you consider the history of the world, evil has already been defeated, conclusively, in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Jesus died on the cross, taking upon himself all the rejection, pain, and suffering the world has to offer. His death was the perfect conclusion and beginning of God’s plan to reconcile with humanity. With His resurrection, He defeated death, which is the reward for sin, which is the result of rejection of God. It’s not evil that we need to be worrying about. It is our indifference, lack of empathy, and blindness to see the nearness of God. Without seeing our infirmities, we have no right to go out and correct the rest of the world. Everything we experience in our body, mind, and soul, God allows for a purpose. The good and bad experiences in life have purposes to fulfil. These purposes always align with the vision God has for us.

With our inability to endure the pain and suffering that we receive from our surroundings, we often lose our patience and say it’s enough. The reality of pain is that, at a deeper level, it opens our vision to help us see and hear God. We become more receptive to God’s presence when we undergo pain and suffering if we are patient. We can lose our patience and ask a sword-wielding imaginary superhero to help us. Such a superhero might even come sometimes. But the reality is that while the superhero delivers you from the problem, your soul stays dissatisfied and your thirst to know God is unfulfilled. Help from demons, satanic ideas, otherworldly entities, etc is incomplete. They might give your body the comfort it longed for, but abandon your soul to rot in the loneliness in which it already is. This is the loneliness you feel when you don’t know who you are looking for, yet you look for someone. St Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

The best attitude to approach God is that of repentance. This is the most difficult step to undertake. The Catholic Church offers sacraments to walk closer to God. The holy sacraments are relatively easy to undertake when we consider true repentance, which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. During my student days, I used to believe that I could find God if I searched seriously and honestly. Indeed, I searched for God passionately. I was honest in my search also. Those were the days when I was a bit inhibited from using the word God due to peer pressure and the influence of the modernist project, just like any other student. Instead, I used the word ‘the universe’, which I picked from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Later, I substituted ‘the universe’ with a slightly more inclusive term ‘the cosmos’, which I picked from Carlos Castaneda. I came across several theories on parallel universes and multiple worlds and thought that a universe is just a singular entity. ‘Cosmos’ is a term that would be able to include all possible worlds.

Finally, I understood why my search for God was not leading me to my destination. The reason was out there in the open. Still, it took some effort for me to identify it. The words, the conceptual labelling that I had given to God, Cosmos, and ‘the universe’ also required me to adopt a ton of other New-Age words and phrases. The ease of using these words, the vagueness that these words easily managed to communicate, and the slippery slope of ideas, made these words my favourites. I might put it the following way: “The alignment of these words with my consciousness, obviously, did not manifest in the opening of my higher consciousness.”

These words, including the word Cosmos, were vague, and meant to deceive myself and whoever heard me talk. When I was not aware that I was being deceived by these concepts, how would I know that I was deceiving others too? The Cosmos has no reason to conspire in my favour, I realised with great pain. The Cosmos is a bunch of electrons and dust. It does not feel anything. It does not know anything. Whatever it supposedly ‘knows’, as the new-age gurus say, is only the shining light of wisdom from the Creator, God. It's such an easy word to use- God. Yet, the present world discourages the use of the word ‘God’ in the public sphere, in political discourses and academic environments. My rejection of God, in the literal sense, was a serious problem.

I came out of this misguided journey in several stages. The first stage was taking the sacrament of Baptism. Several years later, the second stage came: repentance. The sacrament of confession has been part of my life at least once a year. However, it became a pillar of my spiritual awakening ever since I signed my first Kreupasanam Marian Covenant on August 28, 2023. True repentance is the key to unlocking a constant communication with God. it frees us from the bondage of our social status. It strips us of our meaningless titles by ignoring those titles entirely and putting all focus on the nearness to God. Apart from Baptism, I feel, repentance is the most important step to take to grow closer to God. Although I searched for God, trusting my capabilities to guide me through, I ended up rejecting Him even from my vocabulary. It was repentance that brought me closer to God, finally. “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways.” (Ezekiel 33:11) God loves to see us repent of our evil ways.

Evil is defeated by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His resurrection. Our rejection of God is the highest form of dysfunction we come across in the world today. Evil continues to pester us but trust me, it won’t have the ultimate victory. But we must seriously think about our conscientious rejection of our Lord. The reasons for such rejection also are to be analysed. In my case, it was the respect of the world that I coveted. When I found my soul crying for help, I finally turned to God.

You don’t have to go through the same life cycle and suffer the same repercussions of the actions that now reveal themselves as foolish. This is the reason behind writing this article. If I could, at least, tell just one person the importance of acknowledging the Lord and bring to your attention the tendency that some of us have to reject God, I would consider myself a success.