grace

BACICCIO
Apotheosis of St Ignatius
c. 1685
Oil on canvas, 48 x 63,5 cm
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

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on the heels of my post regarding owen's new group blog, i wanted to discuss grace and what it means to you.

in looking back over the last few weeks of my life, i see that grace was evident in many of the things that i experienced, even though i may not have *felt* like i was experiencing any moments of grace at all, let alone being carried by same.

in the CCC, paragraph 1996 states:

Our justification comes from the grace of 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.

how cool is that?

how many events can you look at in your life this past week alone that you felt you would not have been able to get through had it not been God's grace on your life?

how many times have i *gotten through* something and thought "wow, i can't believe i did that?" and not attributed it to God's grace?

i'll answer that: plenty -- i was unaware of what grace was and what it could come to mean for me in my life....

what's so amazing about grace?

• it is participation in the life of God...
• it is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of His own life....
• sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that pefects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by His love....
• habitual grace is the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, which is distinguished from
• actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification

it all brings us closer to God in an intimate way - why is it we are so stubborn a people that we cannot even see He wants an intimate relationship with us? i am reminded of a quote from Isaiah (obviously taken out of context, but it suits my purpose here...) - Is it not enough for you to weary people, must you also weary my God? we need to participate in His grace, acknowledge it for what it is, revel in it, bathe in it, soak in it - take those grace-filled moments and let them wash over us like warm water, turning our faces toward the sun (the Son).

i am realizing as i sit and type this that i have so many God-filled moments in the course of my day that i let slip by because i do not wish to recognize them for what they are! i am so used to mortifying myself in recognizing my faults and flaws that i do not allow myself to experience the moments of grace afforded me by my Redeemer.

oh, how that needs to change.