GRACE

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