What is...Grace?

Recently a seminarian friend of mine emailed from Rome requesting my take on what grace is for a 'Theology of Grace' unit he is currently undertaking.  His lecturer asked the students to seek a Catholic and non-Catholic perspective.  I think I just qualified for the non-Catholic gig!  Anyway I really appreciated the request and found it valuable to revisit how I understand this old concept of Grace.  I responded in two ways the first you'll notice is more spontaneous and experiential and the second more analytic and academic in tone.  This reminded me how we can respond to spiritual notions from different internal spaces e.g. head and heart...both have value in putting language to the spiritual life.

GRACE PART 1
Grace is…



a word that points to relationship with the Presence that innervates every living and non-living thing.


knowing that the reality of Jesus and God is not a fantasy.


finding one’s home in the Sacred present moment


knowing you are loved despite your failings and self-centredness


knowing you can love despite your failings and self-centredness


awareness that there is life beyond death


a sense of connection to the Australian bush


sitting by a seaside on granite rock and feeling the presence of the divine in the waves and the wind


the blessing of children who sleep safely


the embrace of a child


the chuckle of an infant


good food and drink


the deep silence in one’s heart


the deep silence in the land that captures the heart


knowing that enough is enough


true solitude


lovemaking


the deep joy to be found in simple things that surprise by their ordinariness


finding God’s presence in unexpected places


knowing that even hard feelings can be a call from God back to the centre


experiencing the world through touch, smell, taste, sight and sound


friendships that endure


intimacy that endures


discovering the gift of compassion for oneself and the whole world


discovering that Jesus and God are Compassion and Silence and in reality no separation is possible


discovering that prayer and Scripture can lead to silence


looking on the world with fresh eyes


both grief and laughter


GRACE PART 2


Grace may be conceived of as God’s initiative in relating to and loving human persons…



With the following characteristics:


• Salvific and liberating - saving and freeing us from our limited selves. Expands our consciousness to renew or remember relationship with the divine at the ground of all being and existence…the classic lifting out of the mire (e.g. Psalm 40)


• Mystical – mysterious, amazing, beyond comprehension like the great hymn hints at. Grace leads to communion/union with God or is in fact an experience of communion/union.


• Embodied/Incarnated – experienced in the body and the world


• Freely available and unmediated – Anyone at any moment can experience grace – ie receive the sacrament of the present moment – (e.g. Francis de Sales and Quaker writers)


• Christological – in the sense that the receptivity to grace is “built into” every human person. This receptivity is a gift of the Risen Christ who resides in every human heart. Quakers call this ‘That of God’.

 
Thanks for having a read....I'll leave you with that lovely question from Quaker George Fox:  And what canst thou say....about Grace?


PS Picture by my daughter.