The Tribune

CONVERSION is at the heart of the Easter miracle. In the revelation of Jesus Christ, human existence--including death--is transformed. At Easter, we celebrate the power of divine love and light to penetrate the darkness that seeks to obstruct and destroy the gift and plenitude of life.

Pride is one of the deadliest barriers to conversion, resurrection, and new life. The deadliest of sins, to which we are all heir, comes in many colourful and ingenious costumes and surprises, sometimes with brilliant plumage and studied conceit.

Unlike lust and other deadly sins or dispositions, which are typically more obvious and less subtle, pride is sometimes disguised as virtuous, high achieving, upstanding, an adornment to brandish with fanfare like a great honour.

Some degrees of false pride--such as self-sufficiency, independence, and resistance to accept or inability to ask for needed help--cripple our growth.

One of a series of commercials on television featured a man in a gym, who cannot lift the weights off his chest. When offered help, he refuses, stating, “you don’t know my family!” Translation: “We don’t go to therapy. We have to pretend to be strong!”

The deadliest sin: pride!

None of us are wise, strong, or insightful enough to carry life’s burdens alone. Pride often renders us afraid to be open enough to disclose our deepest sins and failures, our daily struggles, and chronic spiritual and psychological wounds and pain, which often worsen as we age.

Our interior lives can become like undrained septic tanks, growing more toxic and filled with stench, which we transmit to others.

Imagine a septic tank never drained, or teeth never brushed, or a wound never cauterized, bound and healed, or a body never washed. Our spiritual and inner lives can become as calcified, as sick, and as dysfunctional.

It’s essential to human growth and recovery to have genuine witnesses to our lives--who know the fuller reality of who we are--and who may help us to heal and restore our better selves, loving us mercifully to new life.

Especially as we age and grow closer to death, we may still summon the courage to bear more of our souls and wounds with others. These may help to unburden habits of the heart and mind that remain unhealed and that paralyze and pain us still, no matter our age or state of life.

The moral life usually requires second, third, and fourth attempts, and more. Pope John Paul I, Albino Luciani, was a devoted reader of his fellow Italian, Carlos Collodi’s 1883 novel Pinocchio. A copy of this tale of fall and redemption reportedly accompanied the late pontiff throughout his adult life.

Just as the world of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is mostly grimy and severe, the world of Collodi’s Pinocchio is more desperate than Disney’s version. The original story has “dark undercurrents.” Pinocchio and his woodcarver creator-father Geppetto, “live in abject poverty and are frequently placed in life-threatening situations.”

Pinocchio--feverishly fabricating lies to cover his tracks and perfume his noxious behaviour--skips school, runs off to Pleasure Island, and is turned into a donkey because of his sloth. As a human jackass, he indulges a carnival of deadly sins and bad habits, as do many of us.

Pinocchio is a moral tale, a story of conversion, of a conscience shaken and challenged through personal struggle and the mercy of others. It’s a story of a soul in moral flux, tending between a desire for goodness and the seductions of self-indulgence and selfishness.

The wooden puppet is slowly, painstakingly transformed into flesh and blood, born again and again. Early in the tale, the Blue Fairy turns Pinocchio from an inanimate puppet into a living, yet still wooden, puppet. She indicates that for him becoming a “real, live boy” will require conversion.

Pinocchio takes the form of wood, animal, and finally, human flesh and blood, representing his deepening conversion to new habits, more fundamental desires, richer relationships, and greater personal integrity.

We are all Pinocchio, struggling to live lives of deeper purpose. If we are fortunate, like him, we have companions on the journey whose forgiveness and love make us more fully human and whose mercy helps to make possible our ongoing conversion from deadly sins into life-giving habits.

Pinocchio is blessed with Geppetto, who sacrifices to protect his son; blessed with the compassion of the Blue Fairy; and blessed with the companionship of the talking cricket named Jiminy Cricket in Disney’s Pinocchio.

Pinocchio experiences the forgiveness that flows from love. It’s the gift of kin like Geppetto and kith like Jiminy Cricket, reminding us that nothing can separate us from their love and the possibility of reconciliation.

Mercy is an invitation, and doorway, to conversion.

Easter is the joy of mercy, commemorating God’s entrance into and redemption of the chaos of human being and existence. The Passion of Christ is the summit revelation of Divine Mercy in Christianity.

Jesus soothes the feet of apostle companions whom he knows will deny, betray, and abandon him during his darkest nights of a soul tempted to hopelessness, to despair, and to self-pity.

Peter denies him, yet is reconciled through the gift of forgiveness. Judas supposes himself incapable of receiving or accepting forgiveness because of his betrayal.

Pride is often the deadliest of the classic seven, because we are bewilderingly unaware of its chameleon wiles. 

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus responds to the cry of forgiveness from one of the criminals crucified alongside him. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” In the midst of his personal suffering, Jesus responds, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The man next to Jesus at his crucifixion is Dismas, given this name in Christian tradition. He was a condemned man at the edge of his existence and tempted by despair.

Even during one of the darkest moments in his, as well as in human history, Jesus supplanted fear with hope. He brought salvation to a criminal stripped of everything. The light and liberating power of Christ redeemed Dismas.

Easter reminds us that this same light and love is manifest and has power over the darkness in which we might dwell. The ability to see, touch, and sense this light often requires conversion and openness to light in the midst of a blindness that enfeebles our spirits and shutters our hearts and eyes.

We need others to see ourselves. We can all be defensive and insecure when others point out our mistakes or errors. However, we should be grateful when those who love us seek to help us grow and see truer selves, helping us to eschew the pride and arrogance that serve as blinders.

It’s difficult and, at times, impossible to see, to imagine, to wonder, in both senses, when surrounded by darkness.

The darkness that engulfs, depresses, and paralyzes the human soul often provokes a profound blindness that makes us incapable of seeing what is directly before our blinkered eyes, whether shuttered or partially opened.

The invitation of Easter is that of profound conversion, a gift in the resurrection of the Christ whose love and mercy remains the Light of the World. Blessed Easter.