A Five-Part Retreat for the Anawim: Forgiveness, Conversion, and the Path Home

Notice to the Anawim: This retreat may be lengthy. Please stop whenever you feel tired or when a visitor comes to the door, and take it up again later where you left off.

Michael F. Conrad, Ed.D.

Preface to the Series

These conversations are offered for those who feel imprisoned—whether by the State, by walls of concrete or by walls of their own making, by misconceptions of what forgiveness means, or by the quiet ache of being forgotten. The anawim, the little ones, the lonely, the ones who wonder if anyone still listens, are invited here not to be told what to believe but to explore, through the experiences of their own lives, an idea that the Catholic Church has carried unbroken from the Upper Room: that sins, red as scarlet and as numerous as the sand of the sea, can be forgiven. Forgiveness is not a human bargain. It is what God, the judge of the living and the dead, has said is true. Heaven is God’s playground. If we want to play in His sandbox, we enter by His rules—the rules of the spiritual universe of which we are heirs—not by the shifting rules of earth. God trumps anything He chooses.

Many who read Matthew 25 conclude that their own ideas about what Christ wanted are infallible. The separation of sheep and goats is real; we must hear and keep God’s word. Yet the same Lord who speaks of judgment also gives His Church the power to forgive in His name. A priest, standing in Christ’s place, absolves. In danger of death, a verbal confession to Jesus Himself is valid. All of this rests on what God has revealed, not on what we prefer the Scriptures to say.

This series of five conversations walks gently with those who may have misunderstood forgiveness as a one-time erasure that leaves no further claim on the heart. We begin with conversion, the turning that baptism begins and that life continually invites. We will look at reparation, at Christ the archetype of reparation, at the penitential psalms as a lifelong posture, and at the daily choice where the rubber meets the road. Each conversation is meant to be taken slowly. Stop when you are tired. Return when you can. You are not alone. You are a pilgrim in a foreign land, and Jesus walks with you.

Conversation One: Forgiveness Is About Conversion or Re-Conversion of Baptism—Asking the Holy Spirit to Help Get on the Right Track Once More

Introduction

Each of us has a quiet room that the anawim know well. It is the place where the world’s noise falls away, and the question rises: Have I lost the way? For those confined by bars, or by the heavier bars of regret, the question can feel even heavier. In the Catholic understanding, forgiveness is not first a courtroom verdict. It is a turning—conversion, or the re-conversion that baptism began and that the Holy Spirit continues to offer. Baptism is the moment we were plunged into Christ’s death and resurrection. The old self was buried; a new self was raised. Yet the old self does not stay buried without our daily consent. We drift. We choose the easier path. We accumulate the small and large choices that take us off the track. Forgiveness invites us back onto that track, not by our own strength alone, but by asking the Holy Spirit to help us once more.

Consider the person who has been away from the sacraments for years, or the one who has confessed many times yet still feels the weight of the same pattern. The Church does not say, “You are finished.” She says, “Come home.” The power given to the apostles in the Upper Room—“Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them”—is not a private privilege. It is Christ’s continuing action through His Body. When a priest says the words of absolution, Christ forgives. The penitent does not invent forgiveness; the penitent receives it and, in receiving it, is turned. That turning is conversion. It is the heart’s reorientation toward the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is asking, sometimes with tears, sometimes with only a whisper, “Help me get on the right track again.”

For those who feel imprisoned by the State, the walls are real. Visits are limited. Time moves slowly. Yet the interior room remains. Conversion does not require a change of address. It requires a change of direction. The same is true for those imprisoned by misconceptions: the idea that once sins are confessed, the conversation is over; the idea that Scripture alone, read through one’s own lens, decides what God must do; the idea that forgiveness is a right rather than a gift. The Catholic Church has always held that the sacraments are the ordinary means Christ chose to reach us. The umbilical cord that connects the Upper Room to this moment runs through the Church He founded. It is not exclusive in the sense of shutting out the sincere seeker; it is the path He designed. Walking it means accepting His rules for the spiritual universe.

Matthew 25 stands as a sober reminder. The Son of Man will come in glory and separate one from another as a shepherd separates sheep from goats. Those who heard the word and kept it will inherit the kingdom. Those who did not will depart. Many who read this passage conclude that their personal interpretation is the final word. Yet the same Jesus who spoke of judgment also established a Church that can bind and loose, forgive, and retain. The judgment is real. The mercy that prepares us for it is also real. Forgiveness is the first movement of that mercy—the turning that places us again on the path where we can hear and keep the word.

The anawim are not asked to pretend the past never happened. They are asked to let the Holy Spirit begin the work baptism again started. That work is gentle and patient. It does not demand perfection before it begins. It asks only for a willingness to turn. In the silence of a cell or a quiet room, the invitation is the same: “Ask the Spirit to help you get on the right track once more.” The track is not a new invention. It is the ancient way of the saints, the way of Benedict and the Cistercians, the way of those who learned to listen with the ear of the heart. It leads, step by step, toward the Upper Room of the inner self, where Christ is already waiting.

This first conversation is only the beginning. It does not settle every question. It simply opens the door. If you are tired, stop. If a visitor comes, pause. The path will still be here when you return. The Holy Spirit does not grow impatient with the little ones. He waits with the same patience He had for the prodigal, and the same patience He has for each of us.

Meditation

The word “conversion” can sound severe, as if it belongs only to dramatic moments on dusty roads or in prison cells. In the Catholic life, it is far more ordinary and constant. It is the daily, sometimes hourly, decision to face the direction baptism set again. Baptism did not merely wash the outside. It grafted us into Christ so that His life becomes the life we live. When we wander, the graft remains. Forgiveness is the moment the living sap begins to flow again. The Holy Spirit moves that sap. We do not generate it. We ask for it. We consent to it.

Imagine someone who has spent years believing that a single confession erases every consequence and every future demand. The words of absolution are spoken; the slate is wiped clean; the person walks away unchanged in habit and in heart. The Church has never taught this. Absolution restores the soul to the state of grace. It does not automatically rewrite the patterns of thought and action that led to the sin. Those patterns take a lifetime of conversion to change. The Spirit given in baptism is the same Spirit invoked in every return. “Help me get on the right track once more” is not a slogan. It is a prayer that opens the door for the Spirit to do what we cannot do alone.

Consider the anawim who have been told, by others or by their own reading, that Matthew 25 is the only word that matters and that the Church’s claim to forgive is secondary. The passage is clear: the nations are gathered, the separation is made, the criterion is whether the word was heard and kept in concrete love of the least. Nothing in that text cancels the earlier commission to the apostles. Nothing in it suggests that the individual reader becomes the final arbiter of what Christ intended. The Catholic Church has always read Scripture within the living Tradition that produced it and that continues to guard it. The same Christ who will judge is the Christ who, on the evening of the resurrection, breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.” The two statements stand together. Judgment is real. The means of preparing for judgment are also real.

For the person behind bars, the practical path of conversion may look different from the path of someone free to attend Mass whenever they choose. Yet the interior movement is identical. It begins with the honest admission that they have left the track. It continues with the request for the Spirit’s help. It is sustained by small, repeated choices: praying even when the words feel empty, examining the day even when it has been bleak, and accepting that forgiveness is a gift that must be lived, not merely received. The Cistercian tradition speaks of a continuous conversion of manners—conversio morum. It is not a single event. It is the ongoing turning of the whole person toward God. The anawim who practice this turning discover that the walls, whether of stone or of habit, do not have the final word.

Re-conversion does not mean that the first baptism was insufficient. It means that the life begun in baptism must be lived. The early Christians spoke of putting off the old self and putting on the new. That language is not reserved for the moment of the font. It is the language of every return. When we ask the Holy Spirit to help us get on the right track, we are asking to be clothed again in the mind of Christ. We ask that the false self—the self that prefers its own rules to God’s—might decrease so the true self, the self made in the image of the Son, might increase. This is not self-improvement. It is cooperation with grace.

Those who feel forgotten by the Church or by God are invited to test this claim in the laboratory of their own lives. Sit with the question: Where have I left the track? What small turning is possible today? The answer need not be dramatic. A single honest prayer, a single refusal of an old habit, a single act of trust that the Spirit is still at work—these are the beginnings of re-conversion. The saints did not become saints by never falling. They became saints by rising again and again and asking for the help only the Spirit can give.

Matthew 25 does not cancel this hope. It sharpens it. The sheep are those who have heard and kept the word. Keeping the word includes being willing to turn when we have wandered. The goats are those who refused to turn. The distinction is not between those who never sinned and those who did. It is between those who accepted the mercy that leads to conversion and those who preferred their own interpretation of what God must do. The Catholic Church, as custodian of the means of grace, offers the ordinary path: confession, absolution, and the lifelong work of living what has been forgiven. For the anawim, that path is not an added burden on an already heavy load. It is the lightening of the load by the One who said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

In the quiet of this meditation, let the idea settle without force. Forgiveness is the door. Conversion is the walking through it, day after day, with the Spirit’s help. The right track is the one baptism opened. It is still open. The invitation remains: ask, and keep asking, until the heart learns the direction home again.

Three Scriptures

Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ … Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’

(Matthew 25:34-36, 41)

The separation is not arbitrary. It depends on whether the word was heard and lived out in the concrete circumstances of life. For the anawim, the text is both warning and invitation. The same Lord who will judge has already provided the means to inherit. Receiving and living out forgiveness is part of that preparation. The passage does not authorize the individual to declare himself the final interpreter of Christ’s will. It calls every hearer to the humility of conversion.

While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.’

(Luke 15:20-22)

The prodigal’s confession is simple and, by human standards, incomplete. The father responds immediately and completely. This pattern mirrors sacramental forgiveness. The turning begins while the son is still far away. The robe, the ring, and the feast are given before the son has proved himself. Conversion continues after the embrace. The story does not end with the welcome; it continues in the life that follows.

Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’

(John 20:21-23)

The power to forgive is not a later invention. It is given on the evening of the resurrection by the risen Christ Himself. The Catholic Church has understood this commission as continuing in the ordained ministry. For the penitent, the words of absolution are the audible sign that the Spirit has been received and that the turning has been accepted. The text stands as the scriptural foundation for the ordinary means of forgiveness that prepare us for the judgment of Matthew 25.

Contemplative time of fifteen minutes

Find a place where you can be still, even if it’s small or noisy. Sit or kneel as you are able. Let the body settle. Don’t force thoughts away; simply notice them and gently return to a single phrase: “Holy Spirit, help me get on the right track once more.” Repeat the phrase slowly, interiorly, for a few minutes. Then let even the phrase fall silent. Remain in the quiet. If distractions come, acknowledge them without judgment and return to the silence. You are not trying to produce an experience. You are simply making space to listen with the ear of the heart. After fifteen minutes, or when you sense it is time, close with a slow sign of the cross or a simple “Amen.”

Actio

Choose one small, concrete turning you can make today or tomorrow. It may be as simple as naming one place, in prayer, where you have left the track and asking the Holy Spirit for help with that single place. If you can, write the request in a few words. Offer it without demanding a particular feeling in return. Let the act itself begin the re-conversion.

Prayer in the spirit of Merton and de Foucauld

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and just because I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. (Thomas Merton)

Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my soul; I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands, without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father. (Charles de Foucauld)

Copyright and Sites

Copyright © Michael F. Conrad, Ed.D. The Center for Contemplative Practice. All rights reserved. Produced in collaboration with Grok. No part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or used for commercial profit without the express written permission of Michael F. Conrad.

Eight Sites Every Catholic Should Use:

www.wordonfire.org

www.scotthahn.com

usccb.org

www.ashenden.org

www.newadvent.org

vatican.va

www.divineoffice.org