Conversion Then Conversation

13 September 2025  Luke 6:43-49

Memorial of St. John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

“I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them.” Luke 6:47

It is a little ironic that today is the Memorial of St. John Chrysostom. “Chrysostom” was a nickname that St. John’s flock gave him. It means “golden mouth” – he always seemed to know what to say.

It has been hard the last few days to know what to say.

It started with the shootings at the Annunciation Parish in Minneapolis that claimed the lives of two children at Mass, injuring 18 more. Then there was the shooting at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado, wounding two before the shooter killed himself. Then there was the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, at Utah Valley University. What the shooters in all three cases seem to have in common is that they were radicalized by social media, and came to believe that the people who disagreed with them were not simply opponents, but enemies whose speech was an act of violence, and this justified the shooters in killing. There can be conversation with opponents, but never with enemies.

Say what you want about Charlie Kirk, he believed in conversation. At his campus events, the people who disagreed were always invited to the front of the line to have their say, and though Charlie seldom agreed with them, he was always polite, and did them the honor of having done his homework – he always had relevant facts on hand.

So, what do we do about this? There is a sickness of soul that is spreading in America, and the treatment is hard medicine. It is chemo that tastes bad, causes nausea and makes your hair fall out.

It sounds like this: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28).

The shooters don’t want to hear that. The people who despise the shooters don’t want to hear that. Fear and hate feel much more normal to them, more likely to solve their problem. But fear and hate are the problem. The only thing that solves that kind of problem is conversation – let them talk, and then deliver the good news of reconciliation and mercy in Jesus.

Too often conversation has been attempted, followed by the good news of gun control, or border control, or tax cuts, or tax the rich. Anything but the Good News that God exists, that God actually loves us, that Jesus rose from the dead, that God has made a place for us inside His life, a place where there is real mercy, real joy, real healing, and real peace forever. Turning the other cheek without announcing the good news in Jesus is just being a doormat: “Hit me again, please!” Turning the other cheek without insisting on the conditions that make conversation possible – like free speech, like the First Amendment, like resisting those who think speech is violence – amounts to building a house on sand. It can only collapse, and yield ground to fear and hate.

For many, this kind of conversation amounts to an experience as profound as conversion. But if there is a place for us inside the life of God right now, and Jesus Himself says, “Come,” then conversion is possible. It may be the only way to have the conversation we need to have. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

The first person to respond to Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain” (Luke 6:20-49, his version of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7) was a Roman centurion, who came a far greater distance to Jesus than any Jew (Luke 7:1-10), and it is his words that we repeat at every Mass: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed” (cf. Luke 7:6-7). Every time we hold out our hands to receive the life of Jesus, we remember the disciple who came the longest way.

It is hard medicine. But the prophet didn’t say, “By His comfort we are healed,” but “by His wounds” (Isaiah 53:5). Conversion makes us hear that. Conversation makes us follow.