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JULY 28, 2002 , 16th
SUNDAY OF YEAR-CHAPTER
Suppose you could ask all the people
in the world who are not hungry, sick, or poor, people who seem to have a lot to live for,
to give you an honest answer to the question, ”How are you?” Millions would say, “I’m miserable.”
(William Glasser, M.D. Choice Theory, 3)
Where is happiness to be found in this
life? How are we to achieve it? What sense can we make of suffering? These are questions
that everyone is confronted with today just as they have always been since the origins of
our race. Many go through the stages of their
lives even into advanced age without having any clear indication of a satisfactory answer
to give themselves or others, one that serves well as they traverse the paths of life. All
of us who have received the gospel as truth and who have heard the invitation to take up
the cross and follow after our Lord know that he himself is the one answer to these
fundamental issues.
Faith, however, does not exempt us from
the necessity of learning by experience something of the realities referred to by such
terms as free will, grace, suffering, sin and predestination. We, like all persons on earth, must continue daily
to confront as best we can the challenges posed by events that raise these often painful
and perplexing questions. We regularly find that they are so bound up with our human
activities that they await us as we strive to carry out our particular destiny as members
of the mystical body. For we must not only believe the truths that are revealed to us but
we are to assimilate them and live in keeping with the values and goals they set before us
as we got about our daily exchanges with others. To gain experience as a man is to learn
that we inhabit a world where we repeatedly meet with resistance, even opposition, from
within and from without, at times where we would least expect it.
The saints, even the very great saints,
were no exception to such struggles, as we see from the witness of St. Paul, to name but
one of the most favored. For him the difficulties raised in connection with fidelity to
God’s law, human freedom and grace were significant enough that he returned to them a
number of times in his letters to the churches. He had struggled at length and repeatedly
in order to arrive at views concerning these mysteries that were able to account for his
experiences of God’s dealings as we travel along the way to salvation. His ideas
changed dramatically after his encounter with the risen Lord from what he had thought
earlier when he lived under the law, as he put it. The changed view is reflected nowhere
more distinctly than in the lines written while in captivity. ’By grace you are saved
through faith, and this is not your doing. It is a gift of God, not from works, lest
anyone should glory’ (Eph.2.8, 9).
We cannot long live a life of faith and of
prayer without coming up against these issues. They bear upon our daily experiences with a
persistence and an intensity that constrain us to reflect more earnestly on these matters
which earlier had seemed too abstract to require our attention. Let the theologians worry
about questions such a free will, predestination, grace, I have more practical concerns,
we felt. But a life dedicated to prayer in which we put all our hope in God causes us to
feel intensely the need to deal with deeper matters that, unaddressed, divide our
attention and saps our energy. We stand in need of reassurance
that comes from knowing we can count on his love and that he will prove faithful to his
promises. We acutely realize that no human support is adequate to the problems we
confront; the answers we seek, the assistance we need can come only from divine
grace.
As
we progressively renounce the things of this world and enter into the solitude of God’s
presence we experience our total dependence on him. And so the question arises with
greater urgency: ‘What assurance do I have that I can trust him?‘ We are carnal
and it is natural for us to crave visible even palpable indications that we are cared for
and loved. When we do not find such support outside of our self we seek it within and so
our interior senses become more important channels of light and strength. In this manner
the words of Paul to the Ephesians cited above takes on a fresh significance for us:
’By grace you are saved through faith, and this is not your doing. It is a gift of
God, not from works, lest anyone should glory’ (Eph.2.8,9).
At the same time this desire for
security arises from the exterior as well. For as we attempt to follow the path of virtue
so as to bring our actions in conformity with God’s will and thus be in a state where
we are able to enter into his presence with that peace and confidence essential to
contemplative prayer, we come to learn our insufficiency. The need for grace in order to
carry out God’s commands becomes apparent to us.
We discover very soon that our best intentions do not suffice to alter
deeply rooted habits. We are led to agree with Aristotle who taught that ‘habit is a
second nature’. After some years, or even decades, of living the monastic life and,
having put off many of our more superficial habits we inevitably encounter what seems
unconquerable resistances to change, even when change is to our interest and in keeping
with our desire. We can then appreciate why the Duke of Wellington is said to have
disagreed with Aristotle and to have commented: ’Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature.’
While this is obviously a gross exaggeration, yet it effectively suggests something of the
resistance we can expect to meet in our efforts to give a radically new orientation to our
more stable habits.
It is not only bad habits that are
firmly fixed in the soul; fortunately, we also encounter good habits that are no less
solidly established in the depths of our character. Indeed, certain good dispositions that
give rise to correspondingly virtuous habits are more firmly inserted within the texture
of our soul than the disordered impulses that hold us in bondage. The love of justice, the
desire to attain to what is genuine and true among others are instances of such
virtue-oriented dispositions that, though neglected and ignored, yet are not fully
eradicated from the soul even when distorted and frustrated by vicious living.
The early fathers understood very well
the truth of our total dependence on God. St. Cyprian, the martyr bishop of Carthage
(+258) stated his conviction that grace is
necessary for us; only with its help can we prove pleasing to God by carrying out his
will. Here are his own words:
we pray that God’s will
be done in us. That it may be done in us, there is need of God’s will, that is, of
his help and protection, because no one is strong in his own strength, but is safe by the
indulgence and mercy of God (Saint Cyprian, Treatises, "The Lord’s Prayer,"139, tr. Roy Deferrari, [Catholic
University of America, Washington, D.C. 1977] "The Lord’s Prayer,"139)
The Greek fathers shared this same conviction
and set about elaborating its implications. In particular, they considered it a manifest
point of faith that the potential for good remained in sinful man in the form of his
nature, made as it is in the image of God. At the same time they were penetratingly
realistic and in consequence acknowledged that the innate impulse toward the good that
gives rise to virtuous habits, was covered over by garments of skin. That is the image
that St. Gregory of Nyssa uses to describe the condition of our race after we had fallen
into sin and became alienated from God. We were, by that very fact, also strangers to
ourselves. Our true self, the image of God within us, as created by God and for him,
remained intact and so continued to aspire after union with him. But it does so
ineffectually, for it was so covered over by evil habit and dispositions that it lost its
power to guide us effectively back to our Creator.
This view was not confined to the Greek
fathers. A younger contemporary of St. Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine of Hippo, arrived at
the same position. He too came to hold that, even though man sinned and lost the likeness
that is needed in order to know God and be united with him, he does not lose the image, so
that he remains capable of God. He states this quite explicitly in his work on the Trinity
and takes this principle as the foundation of his mystical theology. Later on it was to
provide the foundation for the spirituality of William of St. Thierry and was adopted
widely in the West. Augustine formulates his opinion in the following statement.
Before the mind is considered as a
participant in God it must be viewed in itself. For in it is found the image of God. For
we state that even if the participation in God is lost and the image is tarnished, yet it
remains. And by that very fact it is his image by which he can be his participant
(De Trinitate 14.11 cited in David Bell, The Image and Likeness, CS 78 [Kalamazoo:: Cistercian,
1984] 42. .
In formulating this doctrine of the
permanence of the image and the lost likeness to God resulting from sin, the early
fathers, and the Cistercians centuries later, were touching upon matters that have a
direct bearing on the doctrine of grace. For in view of our having lost the likeness to God
that we are created to reflect, there arises the necessity of understanding how to regain
it so as to restore the image to its pristine purity. Since we are by nature made in the
image of God. is it possible for nature to restore what has been damaged? Seen in this
perspective, it is evident that the both the image theology and the proper concept of the
working of grace and of our natural faculties remain of practical import for our life of
prayer. The seeming abstruse discussions concerning these matters are not merely abstract
and sterile reflections of philosophers but matters that affect our attitude to God, our
concept of salvation and our way of prayer.
The first point to grasp is that the
teaching on grace that eventually became classic and remains the accepted doctrine of the
Church today is founded above all on revelation as set forth by St. Paul in his letters.
It is not based primarily on human reason or analysis of human acts. Reason alone, in its
present state, as applied to this question of the interplay between nature and grace did
not prove adequate to demonstrate in any convincing way to the orthodox believers the
proper sphere of grace on the one hand and the natural operations of free choice. Once enlightened by the insight given by the Holy
Spirit, St. Augustine became capable of discerning the way in which grace acted upon
nature, and could give an explanation conformable to reason.
That such special revelation is needed
is demonstrated by history. Any number of persons who were convinced believers were
persuaded by Pelagius when he presented the case for holding that the first steps leading
to salvation depends on man, not on grace. His arguments have a show of reason that
appeals to our natural way of conducting our affairs, a matter of common sense. So much is
this the case that he managed to convince two synods of bishops that his view was
compatible with St. Paul’s doctrine and so was orthodox. There was required someone
with the spiritual acuity of St. Augustine to see that this reasonableness was in flat
contradiction to Pauline doctrine. The Bishop of Hippo saw through the argument that the
first stage of salvation depends on the good will of the person to be saved. However
reasonable such a view might appear to us, in that in our human dealings with others we
look to their good dispositions before we entrust them with our favors, it does not apply
to God’s dealings with man. Divine revelation alone allows us to grasp something of
the manner in which fallen man is restored to his healthy state and recovers the lost
likeness necessary for salvation. Augustine puts the matter in the following terms.
God by his co-operating with us,
perfects what He began by operating in us, since He
who perfects by co-operation with such as are willing, begins by operating that they may
will (De gratia et libero arbitrio, xvii cited as authoritative by Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Theol. 1a2ae 111 art.2, Chicago 1947, 1137).
This view of God’s grace as
initiating the work of salvation in us by effecting the good will necessary to cooperate
with further grace that he offers us became the normative doctrine in the Roman church.
Jesus had already stated the principle in the simplest of language: ‘without me you
can do nothing (John 15.5).’ Augustine grasped the literal truth of these words so
that he maintained that ‘Man is suited only for his fall; he is not apt to effect his
rising. (En. In ps. 129.1, cf. Bell, 59,n. 161). The analyses of Augustine and the
other fathers provide reasons for taking our Lord’s words here quite literally. They
are not a rhetorical exaggeration but intended to reveal a truth concerning the role of
grace, mediated by our Lord, in our salvation. We can do nothing whatsoever apart from the
Savior and the special help from God that we call grace. No one stated the case with more
relentless insistence and clarity of expression than St. Augustine displayed in his
several books dedicated to this matter. Aquinas in the following passage cites the African
doctor nearly 900 years later as the best authority on the topic. In doing so he manages
to add a further consideration showing our total dependence on God’s initiative for
our good acts.
neither in the state of
perfect nature, nor in the state of corrupt nature can man fulfil the commandments of the
law without grace. Hence, Augustine (De
Corrept. Et Grat.ii) having stated that ‘without grace men can do no good
whatever’, adds: ‘Not only do they know by its light what to do, but by its help
they do lovingly what they know.’ Beyond this, in both they need the help of God’s
motion in order to fulfill the commandments . . . (1a2ae 109 A.4, p 1126).
This last sentence affirms the
principle that any act at all on our part is possible only by virtue of God’s moving
us to act, as being the First Mover of all that is and moves. It becomes apparent then,
the more we reflect on these matters, that we are totally dependent upon God for our life
and all the acts that it comprises in this world and, with a more particular necessity,
for our attaining to that eternal life for which we are created. We can relate to God only as being helpless
without his aid. The very fact that we turn to him, that we pray to him, then, is an
indication of his actively seeking us and of his care for us. St. Bernard grasped this
encouraging insight and so exclaimed ‘We would not seek him if we had not already
found him.’ Because we have some hold on
God through his gift to us, we sense that in him is our fulfillment. Moreover, that we
continue to seek his help so as to become all that he intends us to be is itself an
indication that his grace is operating in us. Our
very efforts to seek him are a pledge of his desire to take us to himself.
Thus the doctrine of our total
dependence upon God’s grace assumes a fresh significance for our life of prayer in
that it discloses to us the active, caring wisdom with which God pursues us. Our basis for
holding to this conviction is the evidence of faith, not of reason. Faith creates
possibilities of experience otherwise beyond us. the encouragement and strength it imparts
is the fruit of trust in God’s revelation. It is accessible to those who accept with
childlike simplicity the light offered by his saintly doctors and guaranteed by his
church. Persistent, even tenacious reflection on God’s words in light of his own
experience persuaded Augustine that God is alone deserving of the gift of our very self.
And so he arrived at the persuasion that he felt was best expressed by the words of the
Psalm: ‘For me it is good to cling to God’ (Ps. 72.28). And, he added elsewhere:
‘to whom we cling by loving.” (De Trin. 8.4) He commented further on what
this meant to him.
In order that we might receive the
love by which we might love, we were loved while we did not yet have it… For we would
not have that with which we might love him unless we received it from him by his first
loving us (De gratia Christi et de pecaato originali 27 (cited in Bell, 60).
In the end, the further we travel along
the path that leads to God, the more definite it appears to us that God alone can lead us
on the way that leads to our fulfillment. Then we appreciate with a fresh increment of
sensitivity and perception the depth of significance contained in Jesus’ claim:
‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ Once again it is St. Augustine who
tellingly states the case.
The image which is renewed in the
spirit of the mind in the knowledge of God from day to day, not outwardly but inwardly,
will be perfected by the vision itself, which then, after judgment, will be face to face,
but which now makes progress per speculum in
aenigmate (through a mirror, unclearly) De Trinitate 14:25, in Bell, 76).
The vision of God for which we are made
is a health-giving light that heals and enhances our powers of intellectual and spiritual
sight, empowering us to recognize in him the beauty and truth that is our joy and our very
life. This is the great gift of Gods grace
freely given to those who choose him as their all, ‘with that freedom with which
Christ has made us free (Galatians 5:1)’
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