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Zenit Article 20.1.06
Spirituality
Father Cantalamessa on True Conversion
zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=83148
Quoted below is a small section of the overall text:…
Spirituality
Father Cantalamessa on True Conversion
zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=83148
Quoted below is a small section of the overall text:…
…“Repent and believe”: This phrase does not mean therefore two different and successive things, but the same fundamental action: Convert, that is, believe! By believing, be converted. Faith is the door through which one enters the Kingdom. If it had been said: The door is innocence, the door is exact observance of all the commandments, the door is patience, purity, one might say: it’s not for me; I’m not innocent, I am lacking in this or that virtue. But we are told: The door is faith. It is not impossible for anyone to believe, because God has created us free and intelligent precisely to make the act of faith in him possible for us.
Faith has different faces: There is the faith-assent of the intellect, faith-trust. In our case, it is a faith-appropriation, that is, an act by which one appropriates for oneself something, almost by arrogance. St. Bernard even uses the verb usurp: “What I cannot obtain on my own I usurp from the side of Christ!” …"…