Renounce

Song Meaning

“Renounce” dramatizes the call-and-response by which a baptismal candidate rejected an old allegiance and turned toward a new one. The repeated answer, “I renounce,” echoes the renunciations preserved in Saint Ambrose’s On the Sacraments and On the Mysteries. The candidate rejected the devil, his works, the world, and its disordered pleasures. The song expresses these powers through shadows, darkness, lies, bondage, and a fading kingdom. Renunciation is not presented as an empty negative act. Each rejection is followed by a turn: toward the light, toward the dawn, and toward the kingdom that will stand. Ambrose describes the candidate physically facing the adversary and then turning eastward toward Christ. The lyrics preserve that embodied movement. This is one of the moments Augustine likely experienced personally during his baptism in Milan. After years of divided desire and spiritual wandering, the rite required a spoken decision. The old kingdom is left behind because another kingdom has appeared. Conversion means more than changing an opinion. It means turning the whole self away from one master and toward Christ.