Lectio
“I was like someone who sees that she is obliged to serve more, yet understands that she can’t pay the smallest part of her debt.”
— Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life
Meditatio
One of the facets of grace, or perhaps the facet of grace, that is most perplexing but also most frustrating is that it can neither be produced through our efforts nor manufactured by our will no matter how honest or pure our intentions may seem to be. In the purest sense, grace is a gift and, as such, it cannot be earned, taken, or manufactured. It is offered to us without our desiring it or deserving it. With or without our awareness and acknowledgement of it, and whether or not we consent to it, grace is freely given to us in the form of Christ who poured himself out for the will of the Father on the cross that, in and through Him, we may be saved. This does not mean that grace is forced upon us.
Rather, grace is offered to us perpetually and unconditionally, and we are free to either accept it or reject it as we see fit. Our choice, it should be said, does not change this grace that is, at once, the outpouring and the indwelling of God’s very self given us as the deepest essence of ourselves, but it does change us. But what is so very difficult to fathom is that even our awareness of grace is, itself, the gift of grace. For if it were not for grace revealing Godself to us, we would be blindly unaware of its presence, bound to the finitude of not-God by which we are so easily distracted, deluded, and deceived.
And once we realize this fact — that without grace we are not even capable of saying yes to grace — what is left for us but to bow down in humility and reverence to the love that we could not earn and the mercy we do not deserve? What is left for us but to give this love every part of us, to turn to it in all things, and to be its willing servant, following it unquestioningly through the gates of freedom into the arms of God? And what a gift, even this — to be so utterly outmatched by Love and completely unable to ever balance the scales.
And yet, even having tasted grace, we so often turn away from its source. We so often find ourselves lost in the wilderness of self, alone, parched, and confused as to how we got there again in spite of the living water so freely given us in grace. But when we reach our limits, wherein our ideas, agendas, and actions no longer sustain us, we will inevitably find that grace was always there to quench our undying thirst, to tend to our wounds, whether self-inflicted or inflicted upon us by our broken world, and to receive us into itself once again — finally, we hope, and forever.
Oratio
Oasis of Love
a fount overflowing
with the nectar of grace
a drink so sweet
to my parched lips
and ashen tongue
years of wandering
in the desert of self
have left me hollow
longing for relief
but within that same soul
awaiting my turning
this fount of grace
flows in and through me
a boundless oasis of love
Contemplatio
What is the grace you are most aware of today — and how does it feel to know you did nothing to earn it?
Related Scripture
“And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
— Romans 5:5 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like The Gentleness of God: Receiving The Love That Makes Love Possible, which explores how grace, received in silence and solitude, is the ground of all genuine love — and why we cannot give to others what we have not first allowed ourselves to receive.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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