Conversion is a decisive moment that diverts us from what we knew about our life so that, face to face with God, God tells us what he thinks of our life and what he wants to do with it. At that moment, God becomes supremely important to us, more important than anything, more than all life, even and especially our own.

Without this extreme, dazzling primacy of a living God, of a God who calls us, who suggests his will to our heart, which is free to respond yes or no, there is no perennial faith. But although God leaves us wholly dazzled in this encounter, this dazzling light, in order to be utterly real, must also be utterly dark.

To have living faith is to be blinded by it, in order to be led by it.