News Item: : The Priority of Grace in the Christian Life
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
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Monday 19 September 2016 - 17:03:35

That you might know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, Jesus said to the sick man, ''Arise, take up thy bed and go home!''

Grace and the Response to Grace

Yesterday's readings for the XVIII Sunday After Pentecost in the Traditional Missal contained a reassuring thread in relation to the Priority of Grace in the Christian life.

Any true catechesis worthy of the name will always begin with the mysteries of God and His grace. It is only upon these solid foundations that the priest or catechist can go on to call forth responses of acceptance, belief and ongoing conversion in their hearers.

Even then, the authentic teacher of the Faith must rely more on God's grace than on their own abilities. Then they must leave the rest to God: if they have rooted their teaching in Sacred Scripture and Tradition to the best of their ability, and saturated the whole endeavour in prayer from the heart, then they can take refuge in the powerful words of Isaiah 55:11: ''So shall my word be, which shall go forth from my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but shall do whatsoever I please and shall prosper in the things for which I sent it.''

Christ and Us - Keeping the Right Perspective

During times of trial in one's own life, and of intense crisis in the Church such as we are now experiencing to our chagrin, sincere Catholics can sometimes be tempted to imagine that more depends on them as individuals than is truly the case.

Whilst we each have an important contribution to make, we must never overestimate ourselves through pride. This kind of thing can frequently lead to the loss of interior peace and of trust in God. It is important to recognise this tendency and to know that Satan and his minions will do all that they can to exacerbate it.

A good cure for this tendency is to humbly recall the priority of God's grace. One way to recall this is by remembering how each of us originally came to know and love Christ and His Holy Church. We will soon remember that it was all gift!

For, if we are really honest with ourselves, we will recall that there was really little that we did to deserve being blessed with the supreme privilege of knowing Christ. Certainly, that is true in comparison with what Christ has done for us. He gave more than we did in the exchange of love!

Remembering that He has already given us so much more than we ever deserved or hoped for, should help us to trust that Jesus will not abandon us now. In dark times like these for the Church, we do well to remember that the Christian walk is more about Him than about us!

Some Examples

This all puts me in mind of a few further things.

Firstly, I recall old Fr. Pat Walsh in the confessional at the Blessed Sacrament Shrine during those long-ago days when I was completing undergraduate studies in Liverpool. Even after all these years, I can still hear the late father's Irish lilt reassuring me through the curtained confessional grille: ''Sure, the very fact that you are kneelin' there now shows that God's grace is workin' in your life; for it was Him that prompted you to come here in the first place!''

Another is the fact that my late Dad used to often utter that phrase about the ''privilege of knowing Christ''. It actually comes from St. Paul in Philippians 3:8. The Douay-Rheims renders it as the ''excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord''. When one stops to think just how much of an excellent privilege this knowledge really is, especially in such times as these when so few love God, then one can be moved to deep gratitude and a renewal of trust. Our Lord would not have given us the gift of the Faith if He were not Himself going to sustain us in it. We must trust more to Him than to ourselves.

St. Augustine of Hippo expressed the orthodox Catholic position thus: ''Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God Who works, for His mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without Him we can do nothing.''

The Church Bringing Us to Christ

This came across particularly clearly in yesterday's Gospel - taken from St. Matthew Chapter 9 - in the Traditional Latin Mass. This Gospel proclaims the occasion when Jesus healed a man of palsy, in order to demonstrate His power to both forgive and to heal.

Most of us were brought to Baptism as helpless babies.

In a certain sense, we were like that palsied fellow being carried to Jesus on his bed. This recalls the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which states: ''The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism.''

Even if we came for Baptism as adults we were still spiritually powerless to defeat the presence and working of Original and Actual Sin in our lives. Like babes in arms, we too needed Christ and the Sacraments of His Holy Church to bring the forgiveness and healing from our sins that we could not bring for ourselves.

And again like that man being brought to Christ on a bed by his friends, it was Christ's grace that preceded us, accompanied us and remains with us to this day. Thanks be to God!

In addition to this consoling Gospel, yesterday's Traditional Latin Mass also gave related encouragement in the prayers of the Introit and Collect; as well as the first reading from 1 Corinthians 1 on the theme of the grace of Christ at work in the faithful.

May it Please God to Put Us in His Grace

We pray that today's reflections might help some soul somewhere in these times of great trial.

Let us conclude with a phrase of St. Joan of Arc relating to the theme of grace: ''If I am not in God's grace, may it please God to put me in it; if I am in God's grace, may it please God to keep me there.''

Now, we can all say Amen to that!     

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