Metanoia

An important concept that comes straight from the gospels is that of conversion. Early hermits of the Egyptian desert looked upon this concept as fundamental to Christian living, and called it metanoia. The concept is deep and profound, and considered by early Abbâs and Ammâs of the desert to be the only authentic sign of a true follower. By its nature, metanoia is an act repeated daily, hourly, every moment of one's life.

To understand this concept, it is good to look at how modern day monastics explain it. In a sermon by Matta El-Meskeen, a modern-day Eastern-rite monk, we read: “…the word repentance is a rendering of the original Greek  metanoia which means literally a ‘change of thinking’ or a ‘transformation of the spirit’” (From his book Communion of Love). It is the duty of monastics to begin their life by first changing their thinking...from myself to "I AM".  We all know the struggle such change requires. We can't decide once, and it happens. We have to struggle continually to turn from the "me" to the "Thou". The process begins a transformation of heart that allows God's grace to permeate the mind and soul, and elevates the spirit, teaching it through infused knowledge.  As Olivier Clément writes, it is "knowledge which begins and proceeds by way of repentance, or as the Gospel and the Greek Fathers call it, metanoia: the turning round of our self-awareness, the Copernician shift of the self (individual or collective) from geocentric to heliocentric, enabling us to see in the depth of everything around us the furnace of the divine sun" (On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology).

The Abbâs and Ammâs of the desert knew the grace of metanoia.  Once the soul turns around toward God, in a face to face manner, God's light will enter the soul, cleansing it, enlightening it, filling it. Such face to face contemplation cannot but lead the soul to a higher level of consciousness of God.