They say that Mother Teresa (St. Teresa of Calcutta) had
something like 50 years of spiritual dryness!
She continued to faithfully carry out her responsibilities and care for
the dying, even though there were many times that she didn’t have any sense of
the presence of Jesus.
I don’t think most of us can even fathom what that must have
been like for her.
I think the amazing
thing is that nobody around her even knew it!
She only told her closest spiritual directors and hesitated to even tell
them!
That kind of laser-focus commitment and dedication is surely
a reflection of her awareness of God, even though she felt incredibly distant from
him and lacked much personal consolation; clearly it was the grace of God poured
out on her that sustained her. For the
rest of us, her example speaks volumes of the power of grace, even when our
human senses fail us.
It is that grace that we need to cling to when we feel
lost. The grace of God comes through the
*sacraments, which are encounters with our loving and merciful God.
We talk about sanctifying
grace, which is received in baptism.
When someone is baptized there is a very real change within them. We become a “new creation” in God. Our “old self” passes away.
The sanctifying grace we receive in baptism “perfects the
soul” enabling it to live with God and to act according to God’s call.
Reception of this sacrament unites us in a supernatural way to God and gives us
a proper disposition that leads us to strive to collaborate with God.
Baptism is not simply a nice ritual, a box to be
checked off on one’s spiritual journey.
It profoundly and significantly makes a change in us. In a very real sense,
it is through baptism that we become children of God.
Another type of grace which most of us have encountered at
one time or another in our life is what we call actual grace. Actual grace refers
to God’s interventions and we experience them in very tangible ways, sometimes
on a daily basis.
Grace is acting in every sacrament offered through the
Church and we encounter Jesus in every sacrament, since they were instituted by
him to give grace. Sacraments are not
something the Church made up. They come
from Christ himself.
Interestingly, in the Catechism
of the Catholic Church, Paragraph
1989 states that “The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion . . . Moved by grace, man
turns toward God and away from sin . . .”
The point is, before we are even aware of grace and its
movement in our life, the Holy Spirit is at work in us in a preliminary way,
calling us to move toward God.
“Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call
to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of
eternal life.” **(CCC 1996)
It is important to think about grace here, at the beginning
of Lent, because it is by the grace of God that we come to share in God’s
divine life and actively participate in it.
It is through grace that we have the ability to act selflessly, love
unconditionally and completely give ourselves to God by serving each other.
The penitential and loving acts that we offer to God during
Lent (and throughout our life) give witness to the power of God’s grace to
perfect our human tendencies, raising them to the level of supernatural.
Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow!!
Janet Cassidy
Janetcassidy.com
* Sacraments - There are seven sacraments given by Christ offered through the Catholic Church. Click here to learn more.
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