To repent is to be dazzled by the light

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT [A] | 7 DECEMBER 2025 MATTHEW 3:1-12

John the Baptist’s life came to an abrupt and violent end at the whim of Herod Antipas, a cruel and lustful despot, but his call to repentance remains central to the Christian message. Unfortunately, it is a call that for many sounds a negative note. And yet, repentance is primarily a positive turning towards Goodness Itself, namely, God, and only secondarily a turning away from sin.

This negative misconstrual of repentance is not unrelated to the fact that sin is often thought of, conversely, as primarily positive. But though our sins certainly have positive, in the sense of concrete, aspects and consequences, sin itself is primarily negative, that is, a turning or falling away from goodness, a lack or, as both Augustine and Aquinas have it, a privatio boni.

That we are inclined to construe both repentance and sin “inside out”, as it were, is due in part at least to the fact that sin is still thought by many to consist essentially in disobedience, a breaking of the rules. Many of us, in other words, have carried into adult life our childhood experience of “not doing as we were told”; only now the authority figure is God, rather than our parents.

But until relatively recently, Christian theologians never thought that morality consisted, primarily, in obeying externally imposed moral rules. Once Christianity had emerged from its Jewish matrix, it concurred wholeheartedly with the ancient Greek view that morality was rooted in the innate desire of every human being for flourishing, fulfilment, and happiness; and, again with the ancients, that happiness was to be found in a life, quite literally, characterised by those settled dispositions, that is, by the virtues, that incline us to do, with ease and even pleasure, what is good.

Christians expanded that understanding by adding three more virtues, namely, faith, hope and charity, (the so-called “theological virtues”, named so because they are both gifts of God and have him as their ultimate goal), to the already canonical four cardinal virtues, namely, temperance, courage, justice and, most important of all, prudence. In Latin and Greek, prudence means the opposite of timorous caution, which it usually connotes in English. Prudence is sound judgment that is both realistic and bold, the skill of the wise investor rather than the wary local bank manager. Seeing the happy life as the virtuous life led the early Church Fathers and medieval theologians almost unanimously to see the Beatitudes as summing up Christian moral teaching: blessed or, better, happy, are the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, peacemakers, the merciful, those who long for justice, etc., etc.

Christianity subscribed to the view, in other words, that both the common good and our individual good are served by becoming people whose characters are formed by the virtues, the inner wellsprings of good actions, so that doing good follows from being good, rather than the result of slavish obedience to extrinsic moral rules: in being kind, for instance, rather than cruel; in being diligent, rather than slothful; in being generous, rather than mean; in delighting in the good things of life, both material and spiritual, rather than being dominated and controlled by the enervating pursuit of pleasure alone.

The summit of the virtuous life, as Aquinas would articulate most powerfully, was caritas, by which he meant, friendship with God and one another. Friendship cannot be rooted in anything else but the virtue of caritas, the virtue of love, wishing and seeking the good for others. Love is the New Law spoken of by Christ himself and, according to St Thomas, written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit, not on tablets of stone. “I give you a new commandment, love one another, as I have loved you.” (John 13:34). Obligation never created love and friendship, though love and friendship certainly create obligations.

Earlier Christian thinkers, then, were convinced that life lived according to the virtues, of which charity or love is the very heart and meaning of all the virtues, was indispensable for human flourishing and lasting happiness. Conversely, they understood the vices to be those dispositions which lead to self-absorption, the erosion of community and, ultimately, the very opposite of fulfilment and happiness, namely, self-destruction. The opposite of integrity is “dis-integration”.

To repent, then, is as powerfully positive as falling in love. It is to be dazzled by the light. Repentance, of course, does involve turning away from sin, but as a corollary of turning to goodness; and it certainly involves owning and acknowledging the hurt and harm our sins have caused to others and to ourselves, and how our sins – all of them – disfigure life in this world for all of us.

But, more essentially, repentance is rooted in realising that when we sin – again, in whatever way – we act against our own good: which is why we’re punished by our sins, not for them; and why Aquinas says that God is “displeased” by our sins because by them we irrationally and insanely harm ourselves. (Surely, the same instinct experienced by any parent or friend.) In sinning, we buy into unhappiness, but in repentance, we come to our senses, as did the Prodigal Son, and are liberated from such irrational madness. For Aquinas, to sin is to act against right reason, that is, to act irrationally.

But repentance, paradoxical as this may seem, is also realising that God’s unconditional love for us doesn’t depend on what we do or don’t do. Once we realise that, and take it to heart, without ever taking it for granted, our sins fall away: there’s no room for them, no time, even. We’re too dazzled by goodness, God’s goodness, and, overwhelmed by gratitude, we are spurred on to generosity. As Dr Johnson (I think) said, boredom is the chief enemy of virtue.

To repent, then, is to allow God’s unconditional love to displace our fears and anxiety. Goodness is more original than sin – that’s what this week’s Feast of the Immaculate Conception is all about – and repentance enables us to embrace fully the gifts of life and love, here and now, dissolving whatever inhibits us from embracing Christ, both figuratively now, and when he finally comes, physically then.