Cloudy With a Chance of Metanoia

Photo by Jaleel Akbash on Unsplash

Our ancestors “in the cloud and in the sea were baptized into Moses.”

To be stuck in a cloud, in a fog, is to be unable to see. It is to be lost and, at times, terrified. The sea is dangerous, turbulent and uncertain, a place where we may be tossed-about without direction, possibly to our own destruction.

We need something more than our own effort or self-assuredness to see us safely through the moments when we are terrified; when we “cannot see.” Careening along a fog shrouded interstate or in a violent ocean storm, we cannot control our environment. Our skill or effort is not enough to safely see us through. What do we do in such moments? We pray, freely admitting that we are incapable of moving through these situations by ourselves.

Luke tells us that “if we do not repent,” we will remain lost and terrified, shrouded in fog or tossed about at sea. Some of us may, given our education and upbringing, equate repentance with our ability to change ourselves; to use our mind, our ego or our willpower to affect changes in our lives that will help us to “see” that which is true. This kind of repentance, without giving ourselves over to prayer, seems an illusion.

A deeply transformative repentance, metanoia (meaning afterthought, from meta meaning "after" or "beyond" and nous meaning "mind") is not something that we achieve or accomplish for ourselves via our willpower or intellect. This true repentance, is beyond our will and beyond our mind. As we are terrified, blindly and uncontrollably hurtling through this dense fog, we surrender ourselves through prayer to the grace of Christ that truly transforms us (repentance) and allows us to see that which is true.

Author: John Sabine, Advancement