The new liturgical year began on November 28, the First Sunday of Advent. Similar to the secular new year where we celebrate with others and make resolutions aimed at improvements in some area, the start of the new year in the Church allows us to celebrate the past year of continued conversion in Christ and to reflect on where we have fallen short in our receptivity to God’s grace.
Receptivity to grace is not just a pious phrase or a disposition for the most spiritually advanced people, it’s for all of us. I found it difficult during my reversion to the faith in high school to be receptive to God’s grace, because I perceived I had to feel receptive to God’s grace. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis touches on this phenomenon, writing as a senior devil who advises his demon nephew to make his human ‘patient’ pray for and pursue the first feelings of hope and comfort he was given as a Christian rather than the virtues necessary to follow Christ more closely. Feelings do matter and can often alert us to wounds and idols we still have in our hearts, but once we properly address the ways in which sin manifests, we should pay attention to feelings like we do the laundry as college students: about every couple of weeks and without much distress (unless, of course, you’re in a freshman or sophomore dorm where your clothes are liable to removal by any random person just minutes after finishing the spin cycle).
Knowing receptivity to grace is not an emotional state, we must look more closely at what it is and how it is possible that all people are called to it. In the Catholic tradition, grace is a completely foreign, created substance given freely by God that breaks into the fleshly, lower life of a human being. Because of the great ontological chasm between entropic human life and the wholly different divine life, we know we cannot do anything that unilaterally earns this grace from our end. I have often felt burdened by the great difference between myself and God, but knowing that, indeed, God is so much greater than any human, I have become more confident that He can bring His treasure to my clay. This means God is the One who is active in this relationship, and we are called to be passive in accepting how and where His graces come to us through the sacraments, academic courses, crosses received from our neighbors and past, etc.
This passivity, however, must also have an element of activity in it, as Mary demonstrated when she received the surely encouraging and prophetic messages of the shepherds in Bethlehem, as afterwards she “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart” (Lk. 2:19). I imagine Mary thinking about the Godly words of these shepherds, as well as those in the Hebrew Scriptures, not only in contemplative and personal prayer, but continually and actively in her daily tasks around the house in Egypt and Nazareth. Prayer in the silent presence of God becomes much easier and natural when we are aware of and purposefully think about God’s presence at all moments and in all things during our everyday duties.
All are called to see the world differently through the gift of God’s grace. “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Cor. 15:22). But to be different, especially in a hostile culture that bombards our senses with all sorts of temptations, we all need to think differently. I have spent too much time thinking about the lesser goods of grades, honors, and reputation, using precious time for passing things rather than becoming more acquainted with the only thing that matters after I die: God. By focusing more on the attributes, works, and identities of the Persons of God, lesser things get crowded out of our minds and our willing love and knowledge for God grows exponentially in grace.
When we think differently, we see differently. Instead of seeing finals, for example, as an annoying hurdle to get over, when we think differently we start to be healed of our spiritual blindness and can understand all moments, especially those most painful, as necessary steps on the road to the New Jerusalem where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4).
Max Montana is a senior studying philosophy and theology. When not writing for The Torch, he enjoys reading more about the Catholic faith and philosophy, serving the unborn and mothers in need, and hanging out with friends. Max is honored to hail from the state with many gators and the bishop of the moon: Florida.
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