The conversion.

Two phrases are essential to us as Christians – or rather, the attitudes they express:
1) So what? That’s when the world judges us, evaluates us, and tries to impress into its expectations. But we are no longer of the world. We are not here to please the world but to fight for its favor. Its judgments no longer trouble us. As Paul says, So what? “It matters little to me whether you judge me or another man’s judgment. Nor do I judge myself.” (1 Cor. 4:3)
2) It doesn’t concern me anymore. It does when it comes to the things of this world. To understand. We are happy to help. Commitment to the common good is one of the key marks of a Catholic. But on the other hand… we are no longer part of this fight. We are not living its feverishness or its hopes. We are out of the illusions we’ve grown out of fantasies. We know that the world is and never will be other than the antechamber of Hell. Never will ever be a paradise on earth. That is why we are leaving it. Sure, along the way, we like to help every poor wretch of this world. If we believe in us, we’ll take them in. Gladly. But it’s not our world anymore. His struggles and struggles no longer concern us. We are no longer above it. As Jesus says of us: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” (Jn 17:16). Knowing to separate ourselves from the world and come out of it… is the meaning of the word “holy,” that is, separated from the world and for God and His kingdom.
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The second conversion, the one by which we begin to be Christians – one could liken to that of taking up a sport as a hobby, recreationally – and coming for and asking you, “Wouldn’t you like to do this sport? Could you tell me if you are that serious? And you have to decide whether to move the sport from being a casual hobby that complements your life to a purpose in your life that your life adapts to. This is precisely what the second conversion is about: will I follow Christ? I’m going to move from being a person who lives his life and supplements it with some religious acts (going to church and praying) and principles (I don’t kill my neighbors) towards a person who lives by Christ and for Christ and everything else conforms to this new sense of his life?
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Two things. First, we live when 2nd conversions have yet to pass (statistically) at least 99% of Christians. And probably priests as well. And the second is that God’s miracles at “lurking” just beyond his doorstep, near, near, near.
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Concentration in prayer is not the result of the will trying to concentrate, what commonplace, for which the world of worship is a place where quite normally and naturally, we live not just there for a moment during worship as if we peek.
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Judging is a sign of envy and discontent: I am in denial, overpower, deny myself – and you enjoy? Aren’t you ashamed? Or: I am here, in the background – and you overshadow me; you are noticed and praised and not me; how so? You are not better than me; on the contrary! And now.
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Not for glory. Not for power. Not for profit. For sheer joy!
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Christ must be our friend. Not some “idol” we just kind of worship and bow down to from afar. If that were the case, then he would be an idol in our conception of Him, and our view of Him would prevent us from truly living with Him and following Him. This is what Jesus led His disciples to do, as He says: “I no longer call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends because I have told you all that I have heard from
my Father.” (Jn 15:15) But beware! Being a friend of Jesus and having Jesus as a Friend does not happen by relegating Jesus in our imaginations to our level and into our lives (as, for example, the adherents of the “gospel prosperity gospel”), but by letting Jesus lift us up and up, to Jesus, into His life, to be His companions in His world, in His life, in His work!
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It’s not about dividing life and time between Christ and the rest of the world. As Christians, our life unfolds between us and Christ alone. Everything else is then just drawn into that relationship – and simultaneously purged of everything that cannot be conceived in this relationship because it contradicts it.
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There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who, when they want something, find out the price. And if they still want it, they pay for it. And the other ones who look for a way to get it without paying for it. Heaven has a price, and it can’t be stolen. Blessed is he who doesn’t look for side roads, produces, and gets it.