INTRODUCTION
At the end of today’s
Second Reading, there is a tiny little greeting or wish from Paul to the People
of Corinth to whom he is writing, “Grace to you.” For some reason that word
“grace” struck me.
I stepped back or sat
back and said, “I don’t think I ever preached a homily on “grace”. So that’s what I would like to do: a few words on “Grace”
THEOLOGICAL TERM
Grace is a
theological term -- meaning so much. The basic first meaning of the word
“"charis” -- the word used here is “gift”.
So we hear phrases
like, “state of grace”, or “amazing grace” or “but for the grace of God, there
go I”. Or we hear Mary praised in the Hail Mary, “Hail Mary, full of grace....”
Grace? What does one
say about grace in a 10 minute homily?
So I thought about grace
and came up with 4 thoughts to think further about.
1) GIFT
Grace first all means
“gift” or “gifted”, so let’s think about “grace” as gift first of all.
We describe someone
as “graceful”. We describe someone as “gifted” -- meaning that they are very
graceful and skilled in doing something that is difficult.
An ice skater leaps
in the air, spins around, comes down on the ice perfectly and continues gliding
across the ice, doing more spins, jumps, leaps, and flow. We say, “She is so
graceful.”
Someone puts together
a great party or a great meal and she does it so effortlessly. We say she is
“gifted”.
So too an athlete --
a cook -- a musician -- person who cuts big chunks of ice into marvelous ice
sculptures.
I remember going to
Yankee Stadium once with three students -- all novices. The driver, Kevin MacDonald who recently preached a mission here at St. Mary's was 6 foot 4, showed me how graceful a good athlete could be.
I remembered playing against him in a basketball game - 2 against 2. He
covered me. I scored zero points. Wow. And this wasn’t even his sport. I had
heard that he played Minor League baseball -- a shortstop -- but didn’t make it
to the majors, so I kidded him for becoming a priest, because he couldn’t make
it as a baseball player. Later I found out that his real sport was hockey. Years later he was inducted into the Boston College Hall of Fame for hockey.
Anyway back to our trip to Yankee Stadium. We crossed the George Washington Bridge. We were in the middle lane.
Someone said, “Kevin, you have to get over to the right lane because the exit
ramp for Yankee Stadium is coming up.” He stayed where he was. The middle and left lanes
were flowing, but the right lane was backed up for about a half mile, bumper to
bumper, with people in cars heading probably for Yankee Stadium. There was a
sign, Yankee Stadium -- Next Exit -- something like that. Kevin stayed in the
middle lane moving along at a good pace and then, I didn’t even see it happen,
he did it so smoothly, he was in the right lane right at the top of the exit
ramp. He laughed saying, “You just have to watch the cars till you see a dad turn his head to check the kids in the back seat or to stretch because he is stuck there in traffic. It's at that moment the car ahead of them pulls up a car’s length, and then “Zip. You’re right in there.”
I witnessing a graceful driver -- a gifted athlete -- making a move
and doing it so effortlessly. That’s being graceful. That’s what it means to be
gifted.
Thinking about this
for this homily, I would stress in this first point about grace that it’s a
gift, but one has to work on it.
Every ice skater on
the ice probably fell a million times in practice to get to the stage that they
can do something very graceful and effortless. Or a running back who seems so
gifted has been running, lifting weights, cutting, shifting, a million times in
practice, to be able to pull it off in a game.
Point one: grace
means gift -- but gifts need to be developed.
2) SOME PEOPLE DON’T USE THEIR GIFTS
Point two would be
this. Some gifted people don’t use their gifts. Some people don’t develop their
gifts. Some people bury their talents.
Sometimes this is bad
and sometimes people pursue other dreams.
I have a nephew who
is a great drawer. He can look at a person and sit there with a pencil and draw
a perfect picture of them. He also has a tough job on Wall Street that takes up
much of his energies.
But I also know a
priest. He had been in the seminary with us. Three classes ahead of me. He was
a great speaker, leader, singer, play director, athlete. After his ordination
he taught preaching -- but somewhere there he started drinking and in his 30’s
he became a vegetable. He burnt his brain with booze. You would visit him in
our nursing home and he would look at you, follow your movements, but he was
shot -- gone. He had talents to burn, and he burned them.
So that’s the second
point -- gifts are given for service.
3) JESUIT RETREAT: NAME THE GRACE
My third point would
be the Jesuit idea of “Name the Grace that you need.”
If a person goes to a
Jesuit retreat house, they will hear St. Ignatius’ idea of naming the grace
that you need. If a person makes a directed retreat in the Jesuit system, when
they sit down with a director, the director will ask, “Now, why are you making
this retreat? What grace are you looking for? What gift do you need?” And the
person might say, “Patience!” Or the person probably will say, “I’m not sure. I
don’t know.” Then the director might say, “Okay, begin the retreat with a
prayer to God that you discover the grace, the gift, you need.”
And as the retreat
moves along, the person usually clarifies the gift they need, the grace they
want. Usually it gets deeper and deeper. It might start off as anger at others,
but it might deepen to anger at self. The idea is to get down to the foundation
of a person.
Now of course, we
can’t pray for the gift of a great singing voice or musical ear, if we don’t
have one. I often wish I could just sing “Happy Birthday”. You have to have the
raw materials to start with, but a person could pray for the grace to stop
putting obstacles in front of themselves. My prayer is that I finish things. I
am a great starter, but I run out of gas too quickly. Good beginnings. Few
finishes. So I need to pray for the grace of stick-to-itiveness and then to
work.
4) ALREADY GIFTED
Now the first 3 ideas
I just gave about grace are fairly clear. I don’t know if presented them that
clearly, but they are easy to grasp. This fourth and last point is difficult to
grasp and understand. At least that was my experience as I tried to understand
it. Maybe I have to go back to the drawing board and just give three points.
Well, I started this,
let me see if I can finish this.
The fourth idea would
be the teaching that each of us is a gift. Each of us is graced with the gift
of life. I am a idea of God. I am a plan of God. I am a gift of God.
Could any of us say,
“I am God’s gift to the world.”
We’ve all heard
people say that, but it’s behind a person’s back and it’s not a compliment.
“She thinks she is God’s gift to the world.”
Each of us is.
I was trying to
figure out how to get this across as it appears in the New Testament.
Let me try this way.
Haven’t we all met a
teenage kid somewhere that is just nice. The perfect kid. Just a nice young
person. She or he is just a delight to be with. Our son or daughter comes into
the house with a few of their friends and one of these kids is this kid. The kid
stands out. Just a nice kid. We meet her parents or his parents and we say,
“You daughter was at our house the other day. What a nice kid.” And the parent
sometimes says, “We like to think so.”
What a nice
compliment. More. There are some people who are so gracious, so gifted as
persons, so nice. They are not doing anything. They are just nice.
I have met old people
that way, young people that way, kids that way, adults that way. What I never
did, and this just struck me, as I was preparing this homily, was to interview
them -- to try to hear their inners, what makes them tick.
I wonder if they just
feel amazed at life -- at the gift of being alive.
I wonder if they
thank God every morning for another new day of life.
I wonder if they see
everything with amazement -- apple skin and the beauty and color of apple pie
crust.
I wonder if they see
broccoli, even if they don’t like it and don’t take a two spoonfuls for their
plate, as very interesting -- the great color green broccoli is -- how it’s
like a small tree, etc.
I wonder if they feel
loved by God and / or others.
I wonder if they feel
special -- but see everyone else as special, amazing, because I see this kind
of person as great listeners to older people or they love to stop and play with
little kids.
I’ll have to
interview these people. I’m sure they will have no clue what I’m after, but I
think I do. I want to know what it means to be graceful, full of grace, gifted
as a human being.
I heard a talk once
that Jesus changed everything the moment he heard from the sky, “This is my
beloved son.” He experienced being loved and that’s how he saw every person.
Now that’s a grace. Now that’s a gift.
CONCLUSION
Enough. There are
four beginning thoughts on grace. It’s a gift. It needs to be developed. Some
people don’t and die. We need to name our needs and desires. And lastly, the
key thing is to see ourselves as gifts -- before we even look at gifts like
being an athlete or a great cook, etc. Amen
