Many years ago, as a young child, my husband sat at his small desk and listened to his teacher tell his classmates and him not everyone receives God’s Grace. Given his often unruly behavior and the fact the teacher’s eyes were intent on his uneasy face, he was certain those words were meant for him.
It wasn’t until many, many years later, as a married man and father, that my husband shared this experience with me. He admitted the teacher’s words had taken root in his young heart and soul and, from that moment on, he believed that Grace, and God, had passed him by.
I sighed deeply when I heard this story, and my heart broke for a little boy who felt God didn’t love him enough to share his Grace – whatever that was. And while he wasn’t sure what Grace really meant, he knew, at least, it was a gift from God. A gift God chose not to give him.
As religious educators – whether parent, teacher, religious, or clergy – we must always be mindful of the power of our words. And therefore, realize the importance of having a real knowledge of what we are teaching, especially something as important and challenging to understand as the Grace of God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is often used with adult students, teaches us that Grace is a unmerited favor; the help we need as we strive toward our vocation to become children of God. It is, “the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it” (CCC 1999). And, as with any gift, we can choose to accept it or not. God never interferes with our freedom.
As we worked through the material, I found the very insightful questions the adults asked about Grace were not answered simply by the text, or by any definition in any book we used. It helped me realize that, as future catechists, they would need assistance in teaching their young students about something they didn’t fully understand themselves.
Then I came across a small book entitled,My Way of Life: the Summa Simplified for Everyone. It was a pocket edition of Saint Thomas Aquinas’ masterpiece, Summa Theologica that had been summarized to reach any person who wished to understand more of the truths of the Catholic faith. Within its pages, I read the following: “The Mystery of Grace is a part of the greater mystery that is God's love. Grace is God's perfect gift to us, a gift that makes us God's friends and adopted children. Grace leads to happiness and glory.” The words were simple and meaningful and were a perfect beginning to an understanding of Grace for children and adults, alike.
This little pocketbook also offered some sound catechetical advice: "Since Grace is the effect of God's love in [humankind], and since it is a share in God's own divine nature, we cannot find any exact parallel to Grace in the world of nature. But it might be of some help to try to compare the mystery of Grace to something within the bounds of human experience."
I imagine making this suggestion the heart of a catechist workshop and then reaping the benefit of years of shared experience, formation, and creativity.
In his book, Being Catholic, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk stresses the need for our response, “…grace is not a bus ticket to heaven, an object or thing which God gives us and which we have to hang onto if we want to be saved. Grace is the life and holiness of Christ given to us by the Holy Spirit. It calls for response and development from us. We are called to live out the life of Christ, not merely to possess it.”
Today, I remind adults that our understanding of the many aspects of Grace will grow as we become more and more aware of our own limitations and sinfulness. We grow in our awareness that only through God’s Grace can we respond to God’s love with our own, and accomplish all God expects from us.
Additional Resources:
• Being Catholic. By: Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk
• Catechism of the Catholic Church: Grace and Justification
• My Way of Life: the Summa Simplified for Everyone. By: Fr. Walter Farrell and Fr. Martin J. Healy
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Sacraments and Sacramentals
Mary Regina Morrell is a syndicated Catholic columnist, freelance writer, and author who has served the Church for more than 25 years. She is a former associate director of religious education for the Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey; associate editor and catechetical consultant for RENEW International; and managing editor of The Monitor, Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey. Find her at mary.wellspring@yahoo.com, Twitter@mreginam6, and her blogs, God Talk, and Tea and My Mother's Bread.