September 23, 1994
After Communion
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Title: To Know Him is To Love
R. The more I love God, the more time I want to be with Him. God's love is infinite. I can forever grow in my love of Him. It is through His outpouring of His life I partake more and more in His divine life. He gives me the gift to know and love Him more.
The more I know Him, the more I love Him, the more I thirst after this love of Him. To know Him is to seek Him, to want to love Him more. He gives us a share in His life. He gives us greater grace to share more deeply in His life. He is the gift giver, I am the recipient. To be more saturated with His grace that is my desire. His grace is a gift to me. I can accept His grace. I can reject His grace.
His grace is given - I am the recipient. I respond to grow in greater love and knowledge. I pray for this grace to know and love Him more. I thirst after knowledge of Him. I am drawn to Him as steel to the magnet. The pull becomes greater, the closer I get. The more I know and love Him, the more I see His life present in my fellow beings. This is what I seek to know Him and love Him more. How can I not love you, my brother, when you are created by God? To love God is to love you! I want to love Him. I see you more through His eyes. I see you more as the divine creation of the Father. I see you as the person Jesus died for and know how He loves you.
You are my brother. God is my Father, God is your Father. God is Jesus' Father, Mary is my Mother, Mary is your Mother, Mary is Jesus' Mother.
The Spirit is the love between the Father and Son. How can I not love the Spirit more and more!
God is love. He loved us first that we might share in this life of love. Who are we that He loves us so much? We are His divine creation, a product of His love. We were created in love. We are so loved. Let us then love one another as true brothers in Christ.
Song: Let There Be Peace On Earth
I must love God above all things. I must strive to love all those God created more and more.
Father Carter's writing on grace from Response in Christ
1. WHAT IS GRACE?
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Through this special presence, Father, Son and Holy Spirit unite themselves so intimately to us in personal love that their image is left upon us. This image of the Trinity is sanctifying grace. There are, then, two great realities of grace: God’s personal self-communication, or uncreated grace, and created grace, or the life of sanctifying grace.
As we have just mentioned, God’s gift of Himself in a special loving presence is the aspect of grace which should be stressed. But the reality of created grace—the life God gives us—should also receive its due attention. Scripture so bids us. The eminent biblical scholar, John L. McKenzie, after commenting on numerous New Testament passages, observes: "Wide as may seem to be the range of these passages, they have in common the conception of grace as something given, received, a reality in the Christian and in the world in which the Christian lives."4 Also, looking at the thought of St. Paul, we have the words of Rondet: "In First Corinthians, Paul’s theology of grace takes a big step forward. He continues to speak of grace as a special mercy, a special goodness of God (1 Cor 1,3). But grace now also appears as a created gift, a permanent favor. It is a kind of supernatural power, and charisms in some way embody various aspects of it."5 Rondet speaks further about Paul’s theology of grace: "In chapter 4 of Second Corinthians, grace appears clearly as an interior principle of spiritual life. It is no accident that Paul goes on to talk about the interior man, the ‘inner nature which is being renewed every day’ (4,16)...."6 Consequently, the reality of the life of sanctifying or created grace is very clear in the New Testament.
Created grace, or the life of sanctifying grace, actually inheres in us. On the other hand, the persons of the Trinity specially present to us (uncreated grace), despite their mysteriously close union with us, never become a part of our natures. Although the special presence of the divine persons and sanctifying grace always coexist, these two realities are nevertheless distinct.
Sanctifying grace is best described as a life. It is a sharing in divine life. This life is one of the great themes of St. John. In the theology of John the purpose of the Incarnation is precisely this—to reveal and communicate divine life to men.7 "I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full." (Jn 10:10).
God is bold and daring. Without God’s revelation, who would dare to think that God offers man a share in His own divine life? In Their self-communication to us, and in their sharing of divine life with us, the Trinity truly offers us a daring challenge. They bid us to live life at its fullest, to live a life patterned after their own. Through the new powers which grace gives us, they inexorably call us to go out of our self-centeredness and live a life of dynamic love-relationships with Themselves and man. Through this life of love They ask us to continue the work of Their love, the work of creation and redemption. Through this life of love They ask us to help change the face of the earth. Summarily, our life in Christ is a call to the greatness of love.
To talk of grace, then, is primarily to talk of the personal relationships in love which are established by our Christ-life. These personal relationships we wish to stress in our treatment of grace. First of all, however, we should briefly discuss basic ideas concerning the life of sanctifying grace, which is the foundation for ability to enter into these personal relationships. All things being equal, the more we know about sanctifying grace, the better we can understand and appreciate the nature of these personal relationships in Christ.
Although the life of sanctifying grace is a reality distinct from our natural life, it is not something superimposed upon our nature as icing is added to a cake. Rahner states: "The nature of a spiritual being and its supernatural elevation are not opposed to each other like two things which lie side by side, so that they must be either kept separate or confused. The supernatural elevation of man is, though not due to him, the absolute fulfillment of his being...."8
Our Christ-life permeates our persons completely. Nothing which is good is destroyed. All is elevated to a new level of existence, for through grace we enter a new life. St. Paul affirms: "And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here." (2 Co 5:17)
Why are we able to live on a new level of existence through grace? The answer lies in the fact that we receive a created sharing in the divine nature. Nature, we know, is a principle or capacity of operation according to a certain level of existence. An angel can perform acts of an angel because he has an angelic nature. A man can know intellectually because he has a rational nature. Likewise, through our Christ-life of grace we can perform God-like acts because we have received a new nature. Scripture speaks to us about our participation in the nature of God. In one of the most noted passages of the New Testament on the life of grace, we read: "By His divine power, he has given us all the things we need for life and for true devotion, bringing us to know God himself, who has called us by his own glory and goodness. In making these gifts, he has given us the guarantee of something very great and wonderful to come: through them you will be able to share the divine nature and to escape corruption in a world that is sunk in vice." (2 P 1:3-4).
It is not sufficient that we possess this Christ-life, this new vital principle. Also we need the supernatural faculties through which this Christ-life can both express itself and grow. This is evident if we consider our natural life as an analogy. It is not sufficient to possess a human nature. The life of this nature has to express itself and grow through various sense and spiritual faculties. For instance, one expresses his life as a man when he uses his intellect or when he walks.
What are the supernatural faculties through which my Christ-life expresses itself and grows? These faculties are the supernaturally infused virtues, chief of which are faith, hope and love. These virtues give the Christian the capacity to channel his Christ-life into the various areas of his total existence. Or to put it in a slightly different manner, we can say that these virtues allow the Christian to relate properly to God, man and the rest of creation. They are positive modifications of the person, allowing him to act with various Christian attitudes. The virtues, in turn, are activated by actual grace which affects both our intellects and our wills.
God has given the Christian still another gift of grace. We refer here to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts are capacities which allow the Christian in a special manner to be receptive to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. These gifts, in turn, have as their purpose the perfecting of the infused virtues. Theologians teach that the virtues do not achieve a mature stage of development without the simultaneous activity of the gifts.
Another important aspect of grace is that which is termed external. External actual grace is a person, place or thing which serves as an occasion for internal grace. We must realize the extreme importance of external grace, especially concerning persons. There are many examples. A wife can receive God’s grace through the loving presence of her husband. The witness of a dedicated Christian can inspire us to greater things. The love and encouragement of a friend can spur us to a more generous self-giving in the work of Christ. Yes, persons are extremely important in God’s plan.
How does our Christ-life grow? This growth centers around the themes of love. Our Christ-life grows as we open ourselves up to God’s love in the sacraments, especially the eucharist. We grow in Christ through the love of God and man which is expressed in various types of meritorious actions performed in the state of grace. We grow in Christ when God in His love graciously answers our prayers through which we have petitioned Him to take deeper possession of us through, for instance, an increase of faith, hope and love. In summary, we grow in our Christ-life through the various dimensions of loving relationships with God and others. Love is all important. The other virtues are important to the degree that they are influenced by love and serve love.
end of excerpt
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