What John was Born for

But if we are to grasp this truth in a vivid way, we must be converted; we must as it were do an interior turnabout, overcome the spell visible reality casts over us, and acquire a sensitive touch, ear, and eye for the invisible.  We must treat the invisible as more important than all the things that thrust themselves upon us with such force day after day.

"Be converted": change your thinking your outlook, so that you perceive God's presence in the world; change your thinking so that God may become present in you and through you in the world.  John himself was not spared the hard task of changing his thinking, of being converted, of undergoing what De Lubac calls "The alchemy of being."

His change in thinking began with his having to proclaim, as one crying in the wilderness, a man whom he himself did not know… But John's real suffering, the real recasting as it were of his entire being in relation to God, began in earnest with the activity of Christ during the time when he, John, was in prison.  The darkness of the prison cell was not the most fearful darkness John had to endure.  The true darkness was what Martin Buber has called "the eclipse of God": the abrupt uncertainty John experienced regarding his own mission and identify of the one whose way he had sought to prepare.