Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
Repentance and True Life
PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
Repentance and True Life
PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5298/
R epentance is increasingly becoming conscious of all inauthenticity, pretensions, superficiality and vanity and the deepest longing and yearning for personal integrity. Personal authenticity is the fruit of true conversion (metanoia), true turning around (periagoge).
Repentance is at the service of life. Unrepented people are not truly alive or free. They do not live but merely exist like emotional terrorists, existential zombies and psychic vampires. Ongoing repentance keeps purifying, assaying and magnifying one’s zest for authentic life. Repentance is personal but never private. The fruits of one’s ongoing repentance is always communal, social, global and planetary.
Unrepented life is an empty life,a wasted life, a useless life, a confused life. It is a life which has not been lived properly. The glory, majesty and grandeur of God is human person becoming fully, burstingly, explodingly and gigglingly alive, kicking and kissing.
The one who repents loves life and appreciates the preciousness and giftedness of it. We cherish life to the extent we repent of our sinful and selfish tendencies. God understands everything and therefore forgives everything.
The problem is not with God but with us; that is, most of us cannot forgive ourselves enough, love ourselves enough, cannot accept and appreciate ourselves enough and hence tend to attribute all our miseries to God. God’s forgiveness is always there, eternally and perpetually available to us to respond to.
The one who cannot forgive oneself condemn oneself. It is never God who condemns us but we ourselves. Self-condemnation leads to self-destruction and we are pretty good at it. Forgiveness is the life-blood of life.
The one who responds to God’s forgiveness redeems oneself and thereby becomes a blessing to others. Interiorly unscrutinised life is not worth living. The surgery of one’s soul (Mahatma Gandhi ) is at the service of the social.
“Yet even now,” says the LORD, “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. . . “(Joel 2:12-13)
Repentance is at the service of life. Unrepented people are not truly alive or free. They do not live but merely exist like emotional terrorists, existential zombies and psychic vampires. Ongoing repentance keeps purifying, assaying and magnifying one’s zest for authentic life. Repentance is personal but never private. The fruits of one’s ongoing repentance is always communal, social, global and planetary.
Unrepented life is an empty life,a wasted life, a useless life, a confused life. It is a life which has not been lived properly. The glory, majesty and grandeur of God is human person becoming fully, burstingly, explodingly and gigglingly alive, kicking and kissing.
The one who repents loves life and appreciates the preciousness and giftedness of it. We cherish life to the extent we repent of our sinful and selfish tendencies. God understands everything and therefore forgives everything.
The problem is not with God but with us; that is, most of us cannot forgive ourselves enough, love ourselves enough, cannot accept and appreciate ourselves enough and hence tend to attribute all our miseries to God. God’s forgiveness is always there, eternally and perpetually available to us to respond to.
The one who cannot forgive oneself condemn oneself. It is never God who condemns us but we ourselves. Self-condemnation leads to self-destruction and we are pretty good at it. Forgiveness is the life-blood of life.
The one who responds to God’s forgiveness redeems oneself and thereby becomes a blessing to others. Interiorly unscrutinised life is not worth living. The surgery of one’s soul (Mahatma Gandhi ) is at the service of the social.
“Yet even now,” says the LORD, “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. . . “(Joel 2:12-13)
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