The Meaning of Surrender

Over the weekend, I had a very enlightening series of conversations. It wasn’t planned as much as it was serendipitous. There were a series of questions and answers as well as reflections that caused me to reflect on surrender in the Christian spiritual walk. I remembered back to my earlier reading of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, and it took me back to the moment of my conversion. Reading over the sixth chapter of Romans, was especially enlightening as I thought about this post. In the chapter, St. Paul talks about the radical nature of Christian initiation. St. Paul himself had a staggering and soul-shaking conversion experience. So what does all this have to do with surrender?

Let me go back to the moment of my conversion. I have to share that my conversion was not mere assent to Christian beliefs, but something much deeper. In that moment, I felt transformed in such a way that it shook the very foundation of my soul. I have been seeking to understand that transformation and what it means, and living it out. The insight that I gathered revolves around the moment that I was in my darkest hour and Christ issued the same call He has issued for the last two thousand years: “follow me”. In two very simple words is a very loaded consequence. In that moment of conversion, Christ asks us to surrender our selves wholly to him. St. Paul describes conversion as evidenced externally by the Sacrament of Holy Baptism as death to the old self and resurrection as a new creation in the Lord.

In that sense, I see my Christian walk as a journey of perfecting my surrender. In my walk I see myself as seeking to perfectly surrender my will, my passion and my desire to Christ for His use. Of course, I realize that I’m fallen and therefore imperfect, but in the refinement of surrender, I grow. Indeed, I think that the more we are able to surrender deeper and deeper parts of our selves to Christ, the more we grow in Him. There is no qualifier or easy out here. There is no, “well we’re all rational beings and need some measure of independence”. There is just surrender, and growing surrender at that.