By Grace You Have Been Saved

Deacon Tom Writes,

“By Grace You Have Been Saved”

Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year B

In the brief passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians we hear the phrase “By grace you have been saved” several times. According to St. Paul, grace is the dynamic principle at work in our lives, much like an invisible force, that leads us to faith in Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines Grace as “the free and undeserved gift of God given to us to respond to His call.” Grace, then, is intended to activate or awaken within us the desire to respond to God in some manner or fashion. It is when we cooperate with this gift from God that we come to discover Him and desire Him above all else.  

The Franciscan Friar, Richard Rohr, explains grace this way:  God’s love is total, unconditional, absolute and forever. The state of grace – God’s attitude toward us – is eternal. We are the ones who change.

Fr. Richard goes on to explain: Sometimes we are able to believe that God loves us unconditionally, absolutely, and forever. That’s grace! And sometimes because we get down on ourselves, and carry guilt and fear and burdens, we are not able to believe that God loves us. Biblically, that’s the greatest sin: not to believe the good news, not to accept the unconditional love of God. When we no longer believe God loves us, we can no longer love ourselves. We have to allow God to continually fill us. Then we find in our own lives the power to give love away.  

What a powerful dynamic grace is! Grace engenders faith; faith leads to the awareness of God working in and through our lives. God working through us touches the lives of others while transforming each one of us so that “I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). And by this divine formula, or can we say by this Amazing Grace, we and the world are conformed to Christ and each other.

May God’s grace be with us in our efforts to smoothen the rough edges of the stones of our lives during the remainder of our Lenten journey.  

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom

You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone

                                                 123rf.com_4036057 Heart on fire.jpg

 

Deacon Tom writes©

“You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone”

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Imagine the sheer horror of you and your family being taken captive by an invading army and brought to a foreign country to live a life of servitude. Sorrowfully, this notion does not just fall within the realm of the imagination, for as we are all too aware, tragic events such as this are very much a contemporary reality. We can only imagine the terror of the 276 young women who were taken from their homes in Chibok, Nigera by Boko Haram, a terrorist organization based in northeast Nigeria.  Their whereabouts and condition is still unknown.  Suffering captivity and being taking away from home, family, and community is a terror that many innocent victims of war and violence have in common throughout history.

As captives we would be stricken by our loss, overcome by fear and grief as we realized that we would never see our homes again, never set foot in those places that give us spiritual comfort and precious memories or never experience the familiar, ordinary, and common joys that come from the bigger sense of family and community. Got the picture?  This is the lamenting that we hear in the Responsorial Psalm today. The people of Israel bemoaning, “How can we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land?”  They longed to reconnect to the Temple and their homeland, those places that gave them their identity as the “People of God”. Reflecting on this captivity experience of the Jewish People recorded in Sacred Scripture and repeated throughout the ages by many people calls to mind the expression, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” In other words, we take so much for granted today… our health, our loved ones, our freedoms and our way of life to name a few. 

Given all that we have, it is no wonder that there are other ways to be held in captivity beyond being led away in chains. Our spirits can easily be taken captive. We can become prisoners because of all the changes and uncertainty in the air and the fears and anxiety they breed that paralyze us and take away our freedom. We may fear what the future holds in store; we may be worried about losing our job or fear what will happen if we lose our health care. Parents are concerned if they will be able to pay for college for the kids or how they will be able to take care of mom and dad. And on and on it goes.  Worries, anxieties, and fears combining like a thundering hoard taking control of our spirits and leading us off to places we do not want to go; stealing our ability to live in the present moment which is the only moment we really have… the eternal, present, now.

In looking at the worrisome times we are facing, we do well to look at these comforting words from Psalm 137. Captive Israel came to understand more deeply their longing for God. It was during this time of great suffering and trials, in the middle of their anxieties and fears, in their sense of desperation and hopelessness that they profoundly experienced that it was the great “I AM” for whom they longed, who was the deepest desire of their hearts.

The people of Israel regained their freedom once they turned their hearts and minds back to God. Once they knew what they had lost, they knew what they had to do to get it back.  That is the purpose of Lent…to rediscover the gift of God’s unconditional love for us and to rekindle that love within our hearts. 

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom