and a new Conversion begins..

Talking with my friend Lina, who's talking with her son's girlfriend... Joy has felt the Presence of Christ in the "gold box," the Tabernacle, and said her "Yes!" to Him. "It makes sense now," she says.

That "Yes" is the single most important word Joy, or you or I, will ever utter. I said my "Yes" to Christ back in the summer of 1975, after I saw Him hanging on the Cross, beaten to a bloody pulp with his flesh in gaping lacerations, for the sake of restoring me to union with the Father. Not "the world," mind you, but me, Laura, individually.

But we keep saying "Yes" as we discern His personal will for us. Yes, He wants us to live in union with Him, close to His Sacred Heart. But what vocation? Marriage or consecrated celibacy? What lifework are we called to? What individual mission at any given moment of the day?

And which sins are we hanging on to? What grudges? What vanities of mind and heart do we treasure? When He asks us to hand them over to Him, to protect us from the harm they can do us, do we willingly offer Him our "Yes"?

The Apostle Paul urged the Roman Church to be transformed by the renewing of their minds -- them, and us, too. This is conversion, and it is an ongoing, lifelong process, not once for all. We cast ourselves into His arms, as it were, but then there is this ongoing occupation of becoming so like Him that we others can see His likeness in our lives, as they can see my dad's in my face.