"Full of Grace..."

Our Lady of Grace by Joseph's Studio, Roman Inc.

Grace. It's such a commonplace word in the Christian life but I have to admit I sometimes think that I don't really understand it any better now than I did five or ten years ago.

If you're like me, you start with the dictionary. Incidentally, one of my Confirmation students did the same thing but he picked the wrong definition to put down on a test: "Effortless beauty or style," he wrote down quite confidently. I had to laugh - I wasn't asking him about the Olympic ice skating sort of grace!

Here's what we get from glossary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"The free and undeserved gift that God gives us to respond to our vocation to become his adopted children. As sanctifying grace, God shares his divine life and friendship with us in a habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that enables the soul to live with God, to act by his love. As actual grace, God gives us the help to conform our lives to his will. Sacramental grace and special graces (charisms, the grace of one's state of life) are gifts of the Holy Spirit to help us live out our Christian vocation (1996, 2000; cf. 654).

Needless to say, there's a whole lot in there. Today I am content to really focus on that first part and the three underlying points I see there. Grace is a gift that is 1) "free and undeserved", 2) given to us by God in order to 3) "respond to our vocation to become his adopted children."

I think there's enough right there to ponder for a lifetime, don't you? I mean really, let's think about this - why in the world would God save me? What could I possibly dream of trying to do in order to earn the God of the universe's attention, guidance and, above all, love for me?

I have a hard time letting God in to the depths of my heart, of letting him translate what I've come to know on an intellectual level into real, true, flesh-and-blood relationship. I know I'm not alone in this but I'm responsible to God for my own life - for how I choose to think, speak and behave. But how often to I sort of go along with a view of God as the great judge who's just waiting for me to slip up?

How different is the picture painted by this beautiful teaching on grace from the Church he left to be his voice in the world? He gives me grace that I could never merit, no matter how holy I ever become! Why? Because he wants to - that should be enough for me. What's it for? So that I will have the tools that enable me to live as he intended me to from before he created one speck of dust billions of years ago.

Here's a thought for the road - before God created anything that has ever existed, he thought YOU up, he loved YOU with all of his infinite love, and every second you live he is breathing you into being from non-being! Let's try harder today to just accept this incredible gift of God's grace and let it work freely in our lives. We have no idea where it could take us (actually we do - it's called HEAVEN!)

Have a blessed day!

On authority, mercy, and why I seem to be lacking in the latter...

David and the Sleeping King Saul

I find myself musing this evening over the nature of authority, particularly what honoring those in positions of authority means for us. What does it cost at the end of the day? In a word, I think it can cost us everything when we resist our own pride and humbly obey (a word most of us shudder at when we hear it!)

There he was, King Saul, vulnerable and defenseless - and David knew it. Goaded on by his servants, David knew that he could kill Saul right then and there in a desert cave near Engedi.

But what does this young David, to whom God has promised the kingdom, choose to do? He spares Saul, the very man who has come seeking David's blood. Saul has become a truly evil and murderous man, far fallen from grace. He would never spare David were the tables turned.

But mercy is a strange thing. It's unpredictable - the world doesn't control or dictate it. It can always be chosen, no matter how bleak the situation is. Mercy is born out of a deep, mysterious and wild sea of love. It is the very heart of God. Mercy informs the conscience of David and encourages him to be patient and trust that the Lord is trustworthy and will give him exactly what he has been promised. And so David speaks:

"The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord's anointed, as to lay a hand on him, for he is the Lord's anointed."                                                          1 Samuel 24:7

Saul is certainly on his way out. But David recognizes that Saul is still the anointed king. Saul has separated himself more and more from God, but God never stops loving Saul. He is, after all, the perfect Father.

And so I think about how often I point my finger in blame and strike at others in authority with angry thoughts and words. Would that I grow more in mercy like David and acknowledge that all men and women are beloved children of God with a special place in his heart. And no one is beyond the reach of His mercy - why should they be beyond the reach of mine?