Chesterton on Conversion: A Brief Reflection

Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.

— G.K. Chersteron

Thirty-five years after Chesterton wrote these words, Pope Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae Vitae said the following: 

It is to be anticipated that perhaps not everyone will easily accept this particular teaching. There is too much clamorous outcry against the voice of the Church, and this is intensified by modern means of communication. But it comes as no surprise to the Church that she, no less than her divine Founder, is destined to be a "sign of contradiction." She does not, because of this, evade the duty imposed on her of proclaiming humbly but firmly the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical.

Just as our divine Founder, Jesus Christ is a "sign of contradiction" to mankind, His Church, in proclaiming the Good News to every generation, finds herself contradicting the prevailing view of the age. May we, as members of Christ's mystical Body, convert by countering the selfish hedonism of today that rejects God – the source of life and love.