When we come to a moment in life of desiring fuller conversion, we are in effect becoming aware that God is asking for more. One’s heart might sense this tug, feel the call to respond with more of whatever it might be. Not more legalism or more mortification, but more interior holiness, more development into the likeness of God. This is what is meant by a summons to penance, a summons to a turning of one’s heart. This summons is a grace, a gift freely given. We do not achieve it or make it happen. Rather, God converts us and empowers us to respond with more of our hearts. Francis himself realized that prayer or fasting cannot change one’s heart.
Only God can.
—from the book In the Footsteps of Francis and Clare
by Roch Niemer, OFM
