For 38-year-old Scott Moyer, conversion doesn't mean switching religions. It means drawing closer to Christ.

A cradle Catholic, Moyer says that, after he got involved with his San Francisco parish's young-adult community, he stepped beyond his childhood faith to ask serious questions about how to put his faith in motion, such as, “What does it mean to work in the world?”

Moyer also decided to observe Lent more closely so that he could experience Easter more fully. “I wanted to challenge myself in all the aspects of my faith,” he recalls.

At a Dominican conference, he says, he realized what it means to be “called to participate in Christ's work.” Examining his conscience, he saw that he had been living his faith from a self-centered set of expectations. Now he was being converted — again.

“That [realization] struck a chord in me,” he says. “We do work with Christ and we do bring Christ into the world, whether we know it or not — whether in positive or negative ways, from the people we encounter every day to the life choices we make.”

Speaking in Rome recently, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger put it concisely: “Conversion never ends.”

The catechism tells us that baptism is the occasion of our “first conversion.” But, it goes on to say, “Christ's call to conversion continues to resound in the lives of Christians. This second conversion is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church” (No. 1428).

The first full week of Lent is a fitting time to consider this teaching and ask: What is conversion, anyway? And what do I need to do to undergo it?

Faced with those questions, Dominican Father Michael Sweeney, director of the Catherine of Siena Institute in Colorado Springs, Colo., points to Jesus’ instruction to “repent and believe the good news.”

Note well that things couldn't be the other way around, Father Sweeney says. “Our Lord doesn't say, ‘Believe the good news and repent.’” First, repentance calls for us to turn away from all that would keep us from God; then the good news — the Gospel — calls for us to turn to everything that is of God. “Jesus puts two tasks in front of us,” adds Father Sweeney. “Sometimes as a Catholic people we tend to forget the second.”

After the first moment of conversion, when we repent and turn toward Christ, we need to put on Christ, as St. Paul puts it (Romans 13:14).

“Our conversion is very much incomplete,” says Father Sweeney, “if we're just concerned about sin in our life.”

Most Catholics are aware of the need to do penance and struggle against sin, especially during Lent, says Father Sweeney — “but the second part, putting on Christ and therefore doing his work, often gets overlooked. To be truly converted is to enjoy the same relationship with the Father as Jesus does.”

As St. John the Evangelist says: “[A]s he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). “We're putting on Christ,” adds Father Sweeney. “We're living his life; we're taking up his mission and living it.”

Faith in Motion

It's important to keep in mind that conversion is a lifetime process, says Redemptorist Father John Connor of San Alfonso Retreat House in Long Branch, N.J. “We're always struggling, always falling back,” he says. “It's a day-by-day process — praying, striving, receiving mercy. Even at our best moments, we're beggars trusting in God's mercy to save us.”

He's quick to point out that not everyone is called to make such a radical change — but that all Christians are called to allow their interior conversion experience to bear fruit in the world as evangelization and catechesis.

The call of the Gospel, Father Connor points out, is to put faith in motion — as the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints have. “God is asking us to become more and more like him,” adds Father Connor.

A major component of Moyer's deepening conversion was discerning God's call for his life. After much prayer and contemplation, he ended up leaving his job as a partner in a software firm and accepting a position as director of adult faith formation at his parish.

To believe and live the Gospel is to enter into the work of Christ, proclaiming the good news, continues Father Sweeney. “It's to have the same joy in the presence of the Father and the same solicitude for others as Christ has.”

For laypeople, that means helping to renew the temporal order, he says, referring to Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council's dogmatic constitution on the Church.

How can we put our ongoing conversion “into motion”?

Begin by reading the Gospel accounts of the events leading up to Christ's Passion. Not once, but several times — and always with an open mind for new insights. “We need to let Jesus show us the Father, not let ourselves overrule him,” says Father Sweeney. “Be prepared to be contradicted. We have to prefer God's revelation even when it seems to contradict our experience.”

That seems a little tricky. How about an example to illustrate the point? “We often insist on seeing God the Father as judge,” explains Father Sweeney. Go back, he suggests, and read Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son as a study of the father, not the son.

Next, pray, give to the poor or needy, and fast. Specific acts of penance are fine, says Father Sweeney, “but we really want to get rid of the impediments to the work our Lord has called us to.”

The catechism spells out this point concisely. “Jesus’ call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, ‘sackcloth and ashes,’ fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance” (No. 1430).

There's no time like Lent to get into — or reinforce — the habit of praying. “Make time for prayer,” says Father Connor. “Prayer is the intersection between faith and life.”

Then you need to do something to remind yourself of carrying the cross, he adds. This can mean “something that gets you to be kind to people, that gets you to help people.”

“You need to remain loyal to the Church and be part of the healing process by being a loving believer,” he continues. “Get to the sacrament of reconciliation during Lent. Go to church [more]. Add something on to get closer to God — make a parish retreat or mission.”

Such practices helped Janelle Bighinatti, a 23-year-old waitress in Seattle who began a journey of conversion five years ago even though she's faithfully attended Mass since childhood.

Taking part in her high school's living Stations of the Cross at different parishes “really helped bring the focus back to Jesus and the whole purpose of Lent,” she says. “Identifying with him and taking on our own cross is part of the conversion process.”

Attendance at World Youth Day boosted her ongoing conversion, too. It was “a catalyst for going to daily Mass and making my faith a part of every aspect of my life,” she says.

Bighinatti says daily Mass “has been huge, a real help in the deepening of my prayer life and also in realizing how much we are in community in church.” And she's excited where her ongoing conversion will take her next.

Conversion is no one-time deal, says Father Sweeney. “It's a lifelong task — and an adventure.” One that never ends.

Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.