Today, Jesus praises John the Baptist. He is who in harsh terms demands the "metanoia", to radically transform our attitudes. Our natural disposition, indeed, finds us always ready to assert ourselves, to pay like with like, to put ourselves at the center. Those who want to find God need, again and again, that inner conversion, that new direction.

Day by day we encounter the world of visible things: it assaults us to such an enormous extent that we are tempted to assume that there is nothing else but this. Yet, the truth is that what is invisible is greater and much more valuable than anything visible. One single soul is worth more than an entire visible universe. But in order to have a living awareness of this, we need conversion, we need to turn around inside, as it were, to overcome the illusion of what is visible and to refine the spirit (to grow in spiritual sensitivity).

—John the Baptist himself was not spared this painful process of change, of turning around his thinking. "Metanoeite": change your attitude, so that you may see God’s presence in the world.