Repentance, Faith and Grace
According to Helminski and Sufi tradition(also Christian spirituality), there are three things that are essential for the beginning and the sustaining of our journey, or pilgrimage to obtain the ultimate Meaning and Purpose for our lives. This is necessary to answer the question, “Why am I here?” The understanding and experience of repentance, faith and grace are crucial as we seek to embark on the journey to true meaning and purpose. Repentance , a word used frequently by Christ in the Gospels, as Helminski teaches in “Living Presence”, means to turn, or re-orient oneself, in a whole new direction, toward a new focus or center . In the Gospels it has come to mean to “live along another “axis of being”, i.e. the vertical dimension, oriented towards the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. Once we have been turned inwardly towards that new form of human existence, in order to begin the journey, we need to appropriate Faith . Faith is much more than mere belief. It can be defined as a fundamental