Looking back on the past semester, and looking forward to this new one, we decided to share the convocation address given by our academic dean at the start of the 2025–2026 academic year.
“They shall bring all your brothers and sisters from all the nations as an offering to the Lord” (Isaiah 66:20). [1] On its own, this promise, which we just heard proclaimed at Holy Mass, can be read easily enough as referring exhaustively to the return to the Promised Land of those Israelites (“your brothers and sisters”) who had been exiled andscattered among the nations. Yet the preceding words of the oracle might subtly hint that more is afoot. We read there that the glory of the Lord will be proclaimed and seen among the nations, to those who had never heard of his fame or seen his glory (v.19). Sure enough, in Romans 15 the Apostle Paul intimates that this promise is being fulfilled through his own ministry. He explains to the Romans that the occasional audacity of his letter is motivated by “the grace given me by God to be aminister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:15–16). You’ll hear the echo there of Isaiah 66.
This passage in Romans 15 in turn calls us back to the beginning of chapter 12: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present [or ‘offer’] your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [or ‘rational’] worship” (Rom 12:1). Careful readers of Romans may notice that this exhortation corresponds in important ways to a famous passage all the way back at the beginning of the epistle. In Romans 1, Paul points out that our very perception and evaluation of God, ourselves, and the world have been pretzeled almost beyond recognition by our sinful pride: “although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles” (Rom 1:21–23). Further confusion cascades from this pride-fueled perversion of divine worship:“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever!” (Rom 1:24–25).
With “senseless” minds, far from offering our bodies to God as a holy and pleasing, living sacrifice, we dishonor both ourselves and God. We can thus appreciate Paul’s logic in his specification of how to offer spiritual or rational worship: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2). Recognizing “what is good and acceptable and perfect” so that we can faithfully “present our bodies as a living sacrifice” will require overcoming the distorting effects of sin so that we may see reality aright. And that means we need a transformation of our minds, that is, of our way of perceiving reality, ordering our perceptions, and understanding that order so that our lives and loves may be conformed to it.
Now, let us be clear: the transformation of the mind to which St Paul calls us is to be sharply distinguished from what is sometimes disparaged as “mere head knowledge.” Our culture’s understanding of the life of the mind has become so impoverished that we find ourselves capable of mistaking the intellectual life for a mere accumulation of facts. From one side, the culture of YouTube andTikTok polemics promises to furnish us all the arguments we’ll ever need to “DESTROY” our ideological enemies without ever having to submit ourselves to the hard and humble work of careful thought. From another, artificial “intelligence” incessantly entices us with instantaneously generated “summaries” so that we will never have to read much less think hard about a complex issue or a long and difficult argument ever again. And, yes, there is such a thing as the snobby academic elite who preens over his CV and sneers at, or simply ignores, the uneducated believer in the pew.
None of those all-too-real caricatures of the intellectual life of study is what Paul means by the transformation of the mind, or what our Lord means by loving God with all our minds. And precisely because we are surrounded by such shriveled and twisted counterfeits, we must insist all the more urgently on the true transformation of the mind out of love for God.
Neither is the transformation of the mind simply the same as what is sometimes called “heart knowledge,” which seems to be used to refer primarily to affective experience. In truth, any sharp distinction between “mind” and “heart” is foreign to Scripture. In the Bible, the “heart” is the seat, not of emotion, but of deliberation and decision—that is, of intellect and will. In fact, what the RSV translates “senseless minds” in Romans 1:21, which I quoted earlier, literally says “senseless heart.” This is of course in no way to deny the significance of the affect in the Christian life; we are not brains on sticks. But consider, for instance, the condition and activity of Mother Teresa’s “heart” during her decades of profound, excruciating affective darkness. Every day, she deliberated and decided in her heart, irrespective of her feelings, to worship Jesus in the Eucharist and to serve him in the poorest of the poor. Or consider our Lord’s teaching, “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt 6:21), which suggests to me that my bank account (about the contents of which I must deliberate and decide) may turn out to have at least as much to do with my heart as my feelings do.
Very well. So, Sehorn, what are you saying? That to fulfill Romans 12:2 we all have to undertake a course of formal study? Actually,I don’t want to say “no” quite yet. It is perfectly true that the gift of faith is given to infants and hidden from the “wise and understanding” (Luke 10:21). But the Lord condemns here the false “wisdom” of this age—as Paul says, “claiming to be wise, they became fools.” The gift of faith having been received, every Christian is invited to grow by grace in true wisdom by pondering and seeking to understand that gift. Jesus commends the one who “hears the word”—the seed of the Gospel—“and understands it” (Matt 13:23). St Paul renders the distinction between what we might call childlikeness (humility and purity) and childishness (complacent immaturity) quite neatly: “do not be children in your thinking; be infants in evil, but in thinking be mature” (1 Cor 14:20; RSV-CE, adjusted). It seems, then, that both Jesus and the Apostle consider it proper to the life of a Christian to seek understanding of the unmerited gift of faith that we have received, because we love what we have believed. Presumably this is not to be done randomly or chaotically, but in a disciplined, ordered way—according, that is, to one’s abilities, circumstances, and state in life, which will of course vary widely, calling fora range of regimens of study and reflection. You may now breathe a sigh of relief: Sehorn is not prescribing graduate study of theology to every single Christian.
But some of us have been entrusted by the Lord with the requisite capacity and opportunity to engage in such study. And what a privilege and responsibility that is, for, if we go back to Romans 12, we find that we are to approach any such undertaking precisely as members of one Body(vv. 3–5): “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them,” writes Paul, precisely to build up the Body of Christ as an offering acceptable to God (v. 6a; cf. vv. 6b–8). Done right, the academic study of theology thus serves a twofold end: our own contemplation of God as our faith seeks understanding, and the building up of the Body of Christ as we encourage and assist others in their own transformation of the mind. These two are not competitive—though the deceiver will try to convince you that they are. Rather, our own contemplation of God only increases our appreciation of the pearl of great price and our desire to show it to others. And the more we proclaim God’s goodness and grace, the more his glory abounds in thanksgiving (cf. 2 Cor 4:15).
It is in just this spirit that the Augustine Institute was founded as, and still remains, a“new kind of graduate school for the New Evangelization.” The common endeavor to which we have all committed ourselves, whether as faculty, staff, or students, is properly ecclesial and evangelical in character and scope. We serve the Church’s mission as her sons and daughters. All of our work must therefore be guided by the dual commandment of love. Even when it is not immediately obvious—and it is especially important to remember this at such times—all of our study is an attempt, with the help of God’s grace, to understand what God has revealed to us, about himself and about his plan of creation and redemption.We make this attempt in order that we ourselves might faithfully “honor him asGod” and “give thanks to him” (Rom 1:21)—that is, for the love of God. We also do so in order that we might aid our brothers and sisters, gently, reasonably, mercifully, sincerely, securely, in their own transformation through the renewal of their minds (cf. Jas 3:17; Rom 12:2)—that is, for the love of neighbor.
Our aim, then, in teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, is that we may present every believer mature in Christ (cf. Col 1:28), united to his perfect sacrifice of praise. And we thereby enter, with fear and trembling, but also with gratitude and joy, into the Apostle’s task of bringing all our brothers and sisters, from all the nations, as an offering holy and acceptable to the Lord (cf. Isa 66:20; Rom 12:1).
To him be the glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.
[1] Trans. from Roman Lectionary. All other translations are RSV-CE unless otherwise noted.
