THE GRACE OF GOD

"God loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy: when we were dead through our sins, he brought us to life with Christ - it is through grace that you have been saved - and raised us up with him and gave us a place with him in heaven, in Christ Jesus.

"This was to show for all ages to come, through his goodness towards us in Christ Jesus, how infinitely rich he is in grace. Because it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit. We 'are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it."

-          St Paul to the Ephesians (2:4-10)

THE GRACE OF GOD

By Edward Holloway STL

"Grace" has many meanings, some direct, some indirect, but all of them related to each other, and all of them true. The priest about the parish is noticing with dismay that the deepest and sweetest meaning of grace, the meaning that is most important to the lives of our children, is the one they know least of all about. The sheer, thrilling beauty of the doctrine, and your personal growing towards God through it, through this `grace', is not brought simply and clearly home to them. We used to refer to it as `habitual' grace, because it was something we had or ought  to  have  always,  something  which  was  a  permanent  quality  of  our  spiritual  life.  In everyday language, `habits' good and bad are always with you, and unless you make an about turn, they are permanent as well. The word `habitual' as we used it then, coming as it did from the Latin, referred rather to something you were clothed in. We did not lack scriptural authority for that idea either, the mind turned towards St. Paul's exhortation to "put you on the Lord Jesus Christ", to be robed in Him. We were to be robed in the radiance of Christ, just as in the magnificent vision vouchsafed to him, John the Apostle in the Book of Revelations, sees Mary and the Church she figures as "A Woman clothed with the sun" (Rev. 12: 1-5). To be clothed with the sun is to be transfused with life, vigour, and fertility. Yes, one could do a lot with that old title habitual grace, a permanent quality of your life and being, even if the term is a little obsolescent.

We also spoke of sanctifying grace: it echoes the words of Jesus that, "for them do I sanctify Myself, that they may be made holy through Me". This expression also may arouse no echo in the life experience of the modern child, but it did say a lot. It spoke of our being made to the image of God as Son of Man in Jesus Christ, as well as to the image of the Son of God. It pointed the mirror of our holiness as men and women, the holiness proper to body and to soul, in the likeness of Christ, and in the following of Christ. As it is written: "if you do love Me, then keep  my  commandments".  The process of sanctification, making whole and holy was a following of Christ with joy. It was `Good News' like a new, wonderfully deep friendship. But, like companionship with such friends there was discipline to be lived in the imitation, and a price to pay in the fidelity and the `body training' of the soul, if one may be allowed such a metaphor. To young people one would say `you can't be an Olympic athlete on the cheap', and in spiritual athleticism you have to get off the flab, and give dedication and purification of laziness and passion. St. Paul was always saying the same, - he loved metaphors from the Olympic Games of his own day, metaphors from the training, the striving, the disqualification and the thrill of the victory (1, Cor. 9: 24-27). The term sanctifying grace when you explained it, meant that living communion with God, which made us, in St. Peter's bold phrase, "co-sharers of the Divine Nature", quickening a life within us that took us out of a first, natural existence, and transformed us as we grew into the likeness of God's own being: made us truly sons and daughters, because we became Members of Christ's own body, living by the Life of the Son of God (2 Peter. 1:4).

Life-Giving Grace

The reader may prefer his or her newer title for the same one unchanging reality the Church has taught from the beginning. We might call it `life grace' or `living grace' if we make it clear that it is a force personal to our very own being, to our bodies and to our souls. We could then start from Our Lord's own assertion of His Mission to mankind: "I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly" (John, 10:10) or from another description of Himself and the work of His Incarnation as man for us: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man comes to the Father, except through Me". (John, 14:6).

If we refer to life-giving grace we are brought to St. John's magnificent exposition of Christ's preaching of Himself as the Bread of Life, "unless you eat the body of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life within you... as the Living Father has sent Me, and I live through the Father, so he that eats of Me, the same shall live through Me" (John, 6:58). A mother could say that of the babe that sucks her breast, but not as truly and as intimately as Christ, when he spoke of his Living Communion within us. Of course, straightway we begin to see the meaning of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Christ Our Bread... but we did not want to make so wide a jump in our thinking just yet. It is very hard to avoid the mind jumping to `see' what was not appreciated before, once we begin to think of the life-giving grace within us, by our communion of inner life with the Life who is God.

When we catechize, most of us still speak of the state of grace, an expression which happily has not died out. Some however talk about it rather like a Social Security benefit of the spiritual order. You don't have to do anything to earn it, and you don't run any real risk of having it stopped. You just present your book, your `title' and draw it. If `grace' is a vibrant life drawn from God as the branches draw the sap of life from the root of the Vine, (John, 15: 1-9) then this health and life of `grace' is not going to be as cheap as that. St. Paul is once again on the mark when he states that "I live now not I, but Christ lives within me" (Ga1.2:20) where the emphasis is upon holiness, integrity and humble effort. To state that Christ lives within you, that you draw a vibrant life and health as a member of His body is also a very bold saying, from which we would shrink, unless in His providence God had put it into the mouth of an apostle for our acceptance.

The Sunshine of the Soul

The parallel between the life and vigour of tree, field, plant, and beast living in the world natural to them, and the law of the life of the spirit, of the soul that is, is very close indeed. In the following of this likeness, and in sensing within our own bodies something of that tonic vigour of natural life in its own springtime, we bring home to ourselves and to the young especially, the reality of this idea of a personal, living grace within our own being.

Every springtime, from the year after ordination, this writer has preached a set sermon on `The Grace of God'. After you have been in a parish over six years, some of the congregation, especially the kindly ladies, will give you an encouraging smile. At least then, something has gone in! It can be preached in any sort of parish, but for the pastor working in the countryside, or in rural suburbia, it can be done with especial force.

Rural suburbia indeed in the late spring, with its wealth of tree, bush, and flower, the intertwining of wild nature and planned beauty, can be very like one's imagination of the Garden of Eden. The present writer's parish would be in that category, but Adam around here is definitely fallen, and the serpent can often be seen chatting up Eve.

It is better to choose a day late in May to talk about God, - `the Sunshine of the soul'. On that sort of day, if the sun is shining, many folk will walk down to Mass who otherwise will drive half a mile. The air at the later morning Mass will already purr gently with the hum of the early lawnmower, and there is no smell on earth, unless it be newly dried hay, which is as sweet as the fragrance of a spring mown lawn. As you breathe it in, that fragrance, - it possesses a sheerly tonic power, it restores bodily life. To the young, the sweet smell of spring, cut grass, and fragrance of blown blossom, gives abounding life and power. Even to the old, it brings relief from the burden of permanent tiredness and a smile softens the greyness of rheumatic pain. For it is the time of the sunshine. This sun in the heavens is the life-god of nature, of green plant and tree, wild flower and crop, bird and beast. It is little wonder that fallen man incarnated God in the sun in the heavens in primitive civilisations.

There is no space in this sort of pamphlet to expand the theme, but if you will pick up the Bible, and read the "voice of the Beloved" to the "Spouse" in the canticle which is The Song of Songs, you will find the thrill and life-joy of the springtime, the work of the sun, spoken in lambent poetry that trips off the tongue, even in English, and would be lovely beyond compare in Hebrew or Arabic. So in our own land in the springtime: the day has lengthened, the air sweeps in from a warmer south, and the power of the sun over cold earth and shower, now prompts life and life abundant.

The Song of Songs

Bring it home to yourself one day in early summer, when you walk to Mass, or smell the invigorating aroma of cut grass or new hay. The Song of Songs, whether it be a marriage hymn or not, was always interpreted by the orthodox scribes, the party of the traditional Pharisees, as speaking of the Wedding Covenant of God with Israel, His people and His Spouse. So the meaning of a life of grace, a sanctifying grace, an habitual grace, a state of living grace, comes through with power from the natural order of man's life, to that life of the soul, which, bathed in the sunshine of God exults in a youth which knows no ageing, but grows and matures into the union and communion of the beatific vision.

For to nature the Sun does stand as its god. It prompts life, and life more abundant. Out of a window, even in a city street in a run down industrial area, the eye can watch with delight, in the spring as the days pass, the burgeoning of the buds, and then see the first strike of leaf as the sheath breaks upon the common sycamores, or the plane trees of grey London streets. In back gardens, especially in suburbia, it will be fruit blossom that bursts first out of the bough, and a little sleepy in a cold wind, the first wild bees hum around the blossom that holds the hope of harvest in the Fall. Fall we all must, because fallen is our flesh: but we hope that God will be able to pick some harvest from our life on earth, when the leaf has curled and greyed.

In the sun, and its radiance the sunshine, all nature "lives, and moves, and has its being". For all its beauty this nature cannot know and love God as He is. The sun is the immediate god, the source of life and growth, and constant energy: the source and hope of the seed of life, of its maturing and its later springing. Death and resurrection is in the gift of the sun.

God the Sunshine

God is that power for us: in Him "we live, and move, and are, and have our being". As the sun is the Lord of the earth, the prince of the environment that gives a law of life to Nature, so God is the Sun for us, the Prince, in Jesus Christ, of the environment of grace and life and power, and of its `law' (Acts, 17:28). That `law' works through the order of the Incarnation, the Church, the Eucharist, and the Godly life within man, and within the communities of men.

The parallel is exact. Our Lord often uses the parallel himself. There is the parable of the sower, and the fate of the seed sown. The pointing out of the wheat growing to harvest, growing but beset with darnel. There is the parable of the farmer sowing his seed now here, now there, in an outcrop of good earth amid rocks. That earth brings forth first the blade, then the ear, finally the ripe corn in the ear, while the tiller of the land goes about his daily life, and notices nothing, until he comes looking for fruit at the time of the harvest (Mark, 4:28).

There is the equally powerful image of Christ the Vine, and us the branches that draw a sap, a life-grace, a life power from the Vine. Out of the vine the broken branch withers, has no hope of life abundant, is ripped off and thrown on the bonfire. The branch that lives in the vine, the vinedresser prunes back, so that all the surge of the sap may be channelled into first class fruit.

He also sprays and cleanses it of parasite and fungus, that its energy is not wasted and the fruitbud damaged. God does the same within us, by prayer and self-denial, brave refusal to wanton desire, the putting aside of an endless social whirl of dance, party, fun, games... maybe all innocent enough, but leaving neither time nor spiritual power to work the works of God we had resolved to do. The analogy is close, because the order of reality is so close to the truth. What the sunshine is to Nature, this God is to our soul. What the sap is to the bud and blossom, so is our living grace, or sanctifying grace to our inward man. God is the Vine from which we draw the personal, fruitbearing sap of our personal grace. God is, - and for this writer it is a favourite thought and simile, - "The Sunshine of the Soul".

The Fruits of Grace

The fruits of the earth are manifest, and they are fruits of the sunshine radiant in created nature. They give life and health, medicine, and protection against disease. Do not think that he life-grace of your soul is without fruits that can be seen, even if God does not walk with us now on earth in the form and figure of a man. He can still be seen as the Bread of Life when He is lifted to the eyes of His people at the Moment of the Mass. This is the point of the special Feast of Corpus Christi, of the Body and Blood of Christ. He still lives among His people. He is the Splendour, the `Shekinah' resident within every Christian temple. There is point in public procession, and `Holy Hour' and a dominant immediately viewed tabernacle in the parish church.

There is no true parish, unless the People of God, everywhere and anywhere, are gathered around the altar of the Abiding Sacrifice, and the Tent of Meeting of God with His People. Bear it in mind, next time, if the reader be a priest, when you are thinking of banishing Christ Our Eucharist with the Father, to a side chapel, or even worse a side wall. If you be a bishop, think on it when there is some vague scruple about allowing the `presidential chair' to be placed in front of the Blessed Sacrament. It does not hurt either the priestly president, or his chair, to be turned a little to one side. There is something rather awful about the eye at Mass, turning in direct vision upon `the president' sitting in the dead centre of the sanctuary, as if he were a god. There is a personality cult in the Church of Christ, it is called the Offering of the Eucharist, and the Adoration of The Blessed Sacrament. Christ alone is the "President" and also He is The One Blessed Sacrament of all the world.

But, to return from what has been a digression, the fruits of the life of grace are real. They are not merely legal titles, nor abstract ideas. Just as the fruits of nature are many, and complement each other, so in the deeps of the individual spirit are the fruits of the Holy Spirit, ho is literally, and in a residential manner "The Sunshine of the Soul". These fruits are for instance love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, lasting courage, gentleness of spirit, faith, serenity, self-control, and chastity. There is nothing abstract about people who radiate love, joy, peace, and patience... they are the dearest and best of friends, and the counsellors of the spirit to whom we make our homeward way when returning again to the fervent love of God after perhaps many a worldly meander.

There is nothing the least abstract either, about other complementary gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Sunshine of God, in wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, devotion, and the awe of God. The beauty of Nature's life and life abundant is a `sight for sore eyes on a young summer's day'. So is the beauty of mind and heart, the sunniness of soul, and of peace abiding, and joy abounding, in the face of the man or woman beloved of God. To a priest, to recognise, and most of all in the young, the nobility of soul of a deep and good boy or girl, to see that inner radiance of faith and manner in their face and sense it in their personality, is the dearest joy of life.

Faces that reflect the Sunshine

In those who love God, the love of God prompts the smile of sheer friendship, and the mutual recognition quickens an answering love in return. To know and to sense as much is the supreme joy of parenthood, the total justification of an indissoluble and objective bond of matrimony, and to see it fade, for priest as for parent, is to know the bloodied sweat of Christ. There are some, often older men and women, in whose face the sheer serenity and radiance of their communion with God, shines out like a public manifestation, almost a reincarnation of the reality of sanctifying grace. They are holy, and they are also `beautiful people', but not like those who most arrogate to themselves that title. The face of Pope Pius XII, for this writer, seen and pondered as a young student in Rome, for all the intellectualism and refined aristocracy of his visage, shone with a certain purity and joy of the possession of God. Pope John XXIII had something of it too, in a more earthy, peasant-like way. Some who are not declared saints like Teresa Neumann, and surely Padre Pio, possessed this aura of sheer human beauty in the highest degree in their countenances. In much lower degree, the goodness of inner charity with God, especially when linked with the virtue of purity in life, a virtue which gives a great inner peace, can be seen and sensed in many who are less than saints. The fruits of grace are no abstract reality.

The Life of God in the persons of men can be seen and sensed not only in works, but also in beauty and a certain radiation of beauty. It is much the same in created Nature, in its lesser order. There is the supreme beauty of what we see, in the life and order of field and forest, bird, beast and fish, air and sunshine. Yet also there is the tonic breath of pure air and flower scent, and the beauty of birdsong, falling water, and the music of Nature itself. We cannot see or judge the life grace of another's soul, but we can sense the reflection of that spiritual power radiating through the whole person, body and spirit as one, in what a man works and does, and in the beauty and refinement of the spirit that glows in the manner men and women think, and are, and possess their being through God's grace.

The Manner of Grace's Harvest

The sunshine that prompts Nature's life and life more abundant around us, brings forth the full glory of Nature, it brings out the full majesty and beauty of the created thing from bare seed to beautiful flower or useful fruit. That frail and transient order of being cannot know God, or love Him personally. The sun in the heavens is the `god' of the flower and the fruit, and the touch of the sun brings out the full potential of the seed. So very much is the life of grace, the `sap of the soul', that much more wonderfully the sunshine of God does exactly the same for us, in our own, and God's much more wonderful order of reality and fulfilment.

The `touch' of the Divine upon the soul quickens within us a deepening life, beautiful and rich, which is an increase within us of the likeness to God, and of growth towards His divine reality. It shows itself in the fruits and gifts of virtue, and the nobility of being that we touched upon before. It shows itself most of all in a conformity to the likeness of God revealed to us in Christ. He himself said "if you love Me, keep my commandments" and this conformity to the divine wisdom, which is the measure of the commandments, is also the measure of the communion of divine love that, through our `life-grace' we possess within our bodies and souls through the living, personal grace of God.

The Ecology of Grace

God is of course `the sunshine of the soul' also to the angelic spirits. In their case, pure lambent spirit made simply and totally in the likeness of God's own purely spiritual nature, He can communicate Himself to them directly as the `sunshine' in which they live and move and have their being. There is no let or hindrance whatever between this prompting within them of perfect knowing and perfect loving, and their perfect fulfilment in the order of God's own being. In our case, it is different. We are body and spirit, one harmony and one whole, but these are different orders and energies of being, in the synthesis of our human person.

Grace as a permanent energy of life and being belongs to the soul, and is energised within the soul. Yet, as spirit in man is made for matter and matter is designed uniquely towards the spirit, so the body itself depends upon and is ruled by, and in its highest powers is fulfilled by, the sunshine of God, and the inner grace of life it energises. This requires an order of grace, an order of mutual action and interaction, an economy of ministry, mutual influence, and mutual support. Even in the life of field and flower the sunshine is not everything. The sun could not bring forth its ordered life without the mutual interplay of one form of life upon another, whether to prompt life as the bee pollinates the flower, or to control and cull life, as in the relationships of preyer and prey. The personal living grace, inner, habitual and hallowing that we possess from the divine inflowing does not itself stand without a created order, suffused with the Divine. This can make a little confusion for many. The word `grace' is used in so many ways for so many things!

Grace Works within Order and Ministry

Sometimes  we  use  `grace'  to  mean  little  more  than  luck,  with  a  hint  of  an  undeserved protection, as when some good Catholic driving back maybe from Catenian or Columban dinner, with an uneasy worry about what measure of milligrams of alcohol he may have in his bloodstream, might say, on seeing another being tested at the roadside "there but for the grace of God, go I". We speak of the grace of a good home, a good sermon, the actual, immediate power by which a severe temptation was resisted in the end, or an occasion of sin reluctantly given the miss etc. It is true, but we do the same about natural life and vigour as well, talking about a healthy seaside resort, healthy air, a healthy bank account, and so on. These indirect uses are true because they either minister to the interior health, or derive from it. They may be true, as with the bank account, simply because we are speaking in a metaphor that anyone can understand.

In the things of God we often use `Grace' of that total order of the divine economy and provision, by which God ministers to us our living, personal communion of life-grace with Him. We use it also of the works and relationships by which we minister to others to cause, or to increase, their inner grace of life. These associated meanings of the word `Grace' are natural and proper, because it is only within an order of mutual interaction that God can bring to its perfection the life of grace, the personal `sap' that rises in our souls through His inner touch.

The first beginnings of the inner personal life-grace of every man and woman commence when God first moves within the created spirit that seeks for Him, even in those who have never even heard of Revelation, or of Jesus Christ. The summit of this life of grace is the Incarnation of God for us, in the Divine Person of Jesus Christ: God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. Jesus, God Incarnate, is the high noon of the progress from dawn to peak of the life-power of God's order for us. From Jesus, the radiance of God prompting life and more abundant life in us reaches the fullness of its power. The responsibility upon us who enjoy this full play of God, as the Sun in Heaven, to bring forth abundant fruit, and perfect fruit, in ourselves, and in ministry to our neighbour, is something we too rarely think about. If we thought more about it, there would be more contemplative Orders of monks and nuns, more vocations to the priesthood and to the Religious Life. There would be more who would accept the inner call of God.

Christ our Eucharist

The point has been made that God did not need to become an `Angel' to minister to the Angels. They are like the very being of God as pure spirits made for Pure Spirit. God did however give Himself totally and fully to them as the Sunshine, the Life-force of their being. Before God was made Man in Christ, He nevertheless acted upon our created nature within the soul, in exactly the same way. It was not however the perfect way for us, because we cannot possess the full certainty of divine knowledge, nor enjoy the full love of God as possessed, unless in us, the body can share in our knowing, and in the love which follows more perfectly upon a more perfect knowledge. We need the word spoken, not just the word infused into our souls. God has given us as much as the Angels in the order of the Incarnation, and left that order of God known,  sensed,  and  felt,  essentially  intact,  through  leaving  with  us  the  Eucharist,  as  the testimony of His love, and of His perfect, continuing work of prompting grace in us, prompting that is to say, the life of God most abundant.

When we realise that sanctifying grace, habitual grace, life-grace, call it what you will, is a living communion with God as the source of our spiritual life, then we will understand at once, both why in the Eucharist Our Lord is called the Bread of Life, and why we call our relationship with Him a `Holy Communion'. It is the most perfect communion with God possible to us on earth. It is the most perfect communion possible in the order or economy of life God has left for us, and with us. It will, humbly and sincerely co-operated with, bring forth through assistance at daily Mass, and daily Holy Communion, the fullest growth of our spiritual life in Christ. Body and soul alike, we receive the fullness of God in the fullness of the economy of the Incarnation, in the  divine  magisterium  or  `word'  of  the  Church,  and  in  the  Eucharist  as  Sacrifice  and Sacrament.

It is as well to add, that not simply as a casual extra, did Our Lord teach that even the fallen and mortal body, condemned to die as the penalty of the inner disorders of desire and disobedience brought into its substance by the will of the soul, will yet again rise reordered and purified, in the final state of his new order, through its communion with the Body of Christ: it was not a casual aside that made Christ say "and I will raise him up again, at the Last Day" (John, 6:55).

"Germen Vitae Aeternae"

As we come to the end of this pamphlet, suffice it to say that as in nature, so also in the order of grace, the more `sunshine' we admit or receive, the more abundant the fruit. There is a difference between being planted against a south wall, or a north wall. Good beginnings, and holy parents, can make that sort of difference to us. In physical nature, bud and blossom can be damaged by frost and cold winds, by caterpillar and fungus. So can our life-grace be lessened or even lost by deliberate sin, by the riches, cares, pleasures, and social whirl of this world. It can be eaten away by sensuality and pride, and fail to bear the fruit we had promised God. Let us try not to be like that "rich young man" of the Gospel of St. Mark (Mark, 10:21) who was indeed really good, and had resisted many a temptation from his youth. Touched by the sheer, more than human dignity and authority of this Teacher, he asked him "Good Master, what more is yet wanting to me to do?" Jesus looked at him, knew his sincerity, and loved him in return. Could anyone resist the love of God radiating upon him or her, in the face and being of God the Son? Could anyone say NO to such a further call, and a further invitation to a still more thrilling love? And yet he did, - divided utterly in his inmost soul, he yet turned sadly away, clutching his great possessions, his freedoms, and his many joys and pleasures. Only when he was old, would he, probably, have known how disastrous a mistake he had made, how much richer a fulfilment he had refused.

The inner life-grace of God is a holy communion of friendship with Our Lord, by which we grow up to the full, adult measure of Christ's and our own human fulfilment (St. Paul, Eph, 4:13). This life-love of God we possess within ourselves is a communion with the Reality of God so great, that through it we grow up to be transformed, and to lay hold on God in the perfection of the beatific vision of God Himself. Of this, St. John writes: "Dearly beloved, we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is" (I John, 3:2). No Wonder St. Thomas Aquinas calls this interior grace most beautifully germen vitae aeternae, the "seed of eternal life". How true that is to the analogies and the likenesses we have taken from the sunshine of nature. The seed of life is dormant until it receives the warm ray of the sun. Our soul is a created seed, dormant, until it receives the communion of the play of God, the Sunshine of the soul. The seed blossoms into the glory of the flower, and this abiding inner life of grace leads us all the way, until we are transformed, and blossom into the likeness of God. St. Paul puts it best: "eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man to conceive, what things God has prepared for those who love Him." (I, Cor, 2:9). Let us then treasure this communion with God which gives us life. Let us refuse Him nothing that will increase it, and allow nothing, nothing in the world that may lose it, or even lessen it.

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