We always need God’s grace

MAKE no mistake about it. We always need God’s grace. On

our own, we can only do evil. Whatever good we think we can do without

God’s grace is only apparent. Sooner or later, that good will have no

other fate but to degenerate into something evil.

  

            Actually, God’s grace—at least what is known as the actual

grace—is always available. But we need to be aware of it by constantly

asking for it so that our actuations will always be according to God’s

will and ways even as they are also according to ours.

  

            Let’s always remember that our life is always a life with

God. Considering that we have been created in God’s image and likeness

and are children of his, everything in our life is infused with God’s

spirit which we have to learn to be aware of and to correspond to as

best as we can.

  

            Christ affirmed this truth when he said he is the vine and

we are the branches. “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear

much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.” (Jn 15,5)

  

            We have to overcome our strong tendency to think that we

can be just on our own, wrongly thinking that this is how we exercise

our freedom. Our freedom can only be true freedom when it is exercised

with God who is its source, its power and its end.

  

            The autonomy that we enjoy in this life, especially in our

temporal affairs where we are legitimately allowed to have different

views and opinions, should never be understood as being totally

independent of God such that we can even go against God’s will.

  

            Without corresponding to God’s grace, we are bound to

misuse our human powers. If our first parents, still in their state of

original justice, managed to sin because in a moment they lapsed into

forgetting God and following the suggestion of the devil, how much

more us who have been born already with the handicap of the original

sin.

  

            Without corresponding to God’s grace, the use of our human

powers will be distorted and will just convert into all kinds of isms.

Our intellectual activity, for example, will fall into

intellectualism, the exercise of our will into voluntarism, the joy of

our sentiments into sentimentalism. These human powers become easy

prey to the wiles of our wounded flesh, the deceptive charms of the

world, and the tricks of the devil.

   

            Our will, for example, which is what enables us to be the

image and likeness of God and is therefore our most powerful human

faculty, can be misused such that instead of becoming like God, we can

choose to become like the demon.

  

            For us to correspond properly to God’s grace, we need to

be always humble, always feeling the need to be in his presence and to

know his will in an abiding manner. May it be that no moment passes

without being with God and interacting with him.

  

            We have to regularly examine ourselves to see how we can

plug the hole that takes us away from God’s presence. This hole

usually takes the form of the pride that we can derive from enjoying

our God-given endowments. Instead of thanking God for them and using

them for God’s purposes, we simply enjoy them on our own, using them

entirely according to our will and designs.

  

            May we always be desirous of God’s grace!