It is hard to understand how anyone could behold the profound beauty of an incredible sunset, a beautiful waterfall, a sunrise over a pond with the dew glistening upon it and not be struck by the depth of God’s love for us. Hopefully we are also filled with gratitude and wonder when we ponder the people that God has breathed into existence who give our lives meaning and fill our lives with love. Certainly, our natural order, God’s creation, contains a multitude of remarkable signs of God’s existence and His goodness. When focusing on the goodness that exists within the natural order, we might even be tempted to conclude that all of the world in which we live is graced, such that the sacraments don’t really matter. However, such a belief would reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the created order and the supernatural order and the role of the sacraments in transforming us, His creatures, so that we might be elevated towards the divine order- to be fully restored to God.[1]
While there is much in this created world that is good, each of us entered into this world as fallen creatures. Although we were created in God’s image and likeness, the rupture caused by sin left us in a fallen state. In this state of brokenness, we remain restless until we rest in God.[2] How do we account for this inherent longing within each of us to share in God’s divine life? Some might suggest that it indicates we were born with the seedling of the divine within us, simply waiting for us to nurture it so that we can be transformed. But in reality, this longing is just the opposite. It is an awareness of what is lacking within us- an awareness that we do not inherently possess what we need to achieve our greatest hope and desire- union with God.
Throughout our lives, we learn that this longing cannot be satisfied by anything we can do, that we are incapable on our own of constructing the pathway to share in God’s divine life. In response to this reality, some of us may try to make ourselves feel like gods by seeking power, money and prestige. Others may seek to influence the created world by seeking justice and dignity for all of God’s people so that this world might more closely reflect the divine order to which we desperately want to belong. Even if our efforts are entirely honorable and selfless, the truth remains that our efforts alone cannot transform us into God or transform our created world into the supernatural order of God.
Just as we were not born in a state of grace, we also cannot manufacture for ourselves the grace we need for our salvation. That saving and redeeming grace could only be granted to us by God out of his gratuitous love for us. As St. Paul reminds us:
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not by our own doing, it is the gift of God- not because of works, lest any many should boast.
Eph. 3:8
Unlike anything we might do to elevate ourselves or the world around us, grace raises us much higher above the level of our own essence and infinitely surpasses the necessities of any possible nature.[4] After all scientific experimentation has been exhausted and all human understanding and knowledge has been attained, this supernatural order will still lie just beyond.[5] As Henri de Lubac and Maurice Blondel beautifully expressed:
One cannot move from man to God “by walking forward on the same level, so to speak”; the abyss between them can be bridged only “by the marvellous invention of divine charity.”[6]
And God has revealed to us that His divine charity knows no limits. Despite our sinfulness, God loved us too much to leave us stranded in this natural world, separated from Him by an abyss we could not overcome. Instead, through the Incarnation, He united the natural world with the supernatural, that we might not only be saved, but redeemed. It is in the divine charity revealed through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection that we learn that our loving God continues to offer us, His sinful creatures, grace, mercy, and salvation.
Although we may think of the divine life as being entirely distinct and far distant from our mortal life, when we seek and receive God’s grace, an intimate union with this spiritual otherness of the divine order can occur within each of us.[7] God’s divine charity unites itself to man, not merely elevating him, but penetrating him in order to divinize him as he is transformed into a new man, a sharer in the divine nature. Through the influx of God’s Spirit within us, our creaturely being is made divine.[8] This God-given grace penetrates the substance of the soul and renders it, as a soul, capable of sharing God’s divine life.[9] Through this profoundly beautiful mystery, God’s gratuitous love coupled with our willingness to welcome and receive this love, empowers us to truly become children of God.[10]
Even though the perfect harmony of Christian synthesis will not be fully realized within the natural world in which we live, uniting our wills with God’s through His grace will bear fruit in this world and, most importantly, prepare us for our ultimate destiny which transcends this created order. God’s grace is irreconcilable to sin, for grace calls us to share in His divine life and sin is our refusal to do so. Accordingly, grace calls us to a “total upheaval”, to a “conversion” (of the “heart”, i.e, of all one’s being.) Grace reaches into the depths of our sinful conscience so that we might be convicted of our guilt and repent. Through grace, God can heal us and liberate us from our sin, transform us in the depths of our being. We can be “converted”, and our hearts can be changed.[11] It is through this conversion that we move towards the ultimate end for which we were all created, union with Him.[12]
The essential, irreplaceable mission of the Church is to remind us constantly of our divine supernatural vocation and to communicate to us through her sacred ministry and her sacraments the graces needed to instill and nurture the divine life within.[13] This is the very purpose for which she was created. It is through the Church’s sacraments that this grace is outpoured, that we experience the liberation from sin and the joy of knowing God and being known by Him. Through Reconciliation, we as God’s children are able to turn to Him and receive His pardon, be healed from and freed of the burden of sin and united instead to grace.[14] Through the Eucharist we receive the grace of full communion with Him and are empowered to live more closely in union with Him. It is through the sacraments that we are transformed through His grace, are sanctified and made holy, empowered to live this reality of sharing in His divine life to which we all are called.
[1] Lubac, Henri de. A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace. Ignatius Press, 1984, p.20.
[2] St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 1, 1.5.
[3] Eph 3:8.
[4] Id, p. 26,
[5] Id, p. 31.
[6] Id, p. 32, citing Maurice Blondel [Bernard de Sailly], in Annales de philosophie Chretienne (July, 1907), 346-47.
[7] Id, p.49.
[8] Id, pp.41-42.
[9] Id, p.46, citing Fr. Louis Bouyer, Introduction a la vie spirituelle (Desclee, 1960), 154-55.
[10] Id, pp. 50, 56.
[11] Id, p. 164, citing Yves de Montcheuil, Le Royaume et ses exigences (Editions de l’Epi, 1957), 47-49.
[12] Id, pp.88-90, 137.
[13] Id, p.110-111.
[14] Id, p. 122.