The Church: Called to Mediate Grace

 Ours is a searching God. St Catherine of Siena spoke of God being pazzo d’amore and ebro d’amore – crazed with love for us, drunk with love for us. She was right. How far has the Lord’s foolish love compelled Him to come in search of us. And at what a cost to Himself does He carry us home.

Look at the Gospels. The worse a person felt about himself or herself, the more likely they saw Jesus as a refuge. In His loving companionship lost souls knew themselves to be more than they had dared to imagine. Jesus brought these people, trapped in their tortured lives, a message of hope – anyone, anyone at any moment can start a new future by the sheer goodness of God.  

In God’s grace we grow to love ourselves as He wants – all of ourselves, even the parts we wish were not there, the parts of us we wish God hadn’t made, the parts of us we lament.

“Zacchaeus, come down, I am staying with you today!”

The Church exists to mediate that free, transforming love we call grace. The Church’s primary role is to share the Gospel of God’s grace – that unrestricted gracious love that, when it is accepted with joy, lifts up and changes lives. Such grace comes from beyond, as a gift not an achievement.

Gordon MacDonald wrote: “The world can do almost anything as well or better than the Church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or care for the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace.”

Philip Yancey, reflecting on his own spiritual journey, said: “I rejected the Church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.”


Francis lived in a time when the Church was shaken by scandals and tensions - far worst than in our own time. However, he was clear that his calling meant remaining firmly within the family of the Church, staying open and available to God's graious action himself, and working to make the Church more clearly, more effectively a sacred space where the grace of God's goodness can be experienced by a seeking world. 


It is a faith persepective that enables us to stand steadfast.

St Francis and the Eucharist

 As the Church in Ireland celebrates the International Eucharistic Congress (10-17 June), we see how for St Francis the Eucharist was at the heart of the Gospel way of life.

For Francis the Eucharist is the major way in which he sees Christ in this world. He had an intense reverence and love for the Lord "hidden" in the sacrament of his body and blood.

For Francis this sacrament was a sign of the complete self-emptying of Christ. In the first of his Admonitions, which is about the Eucharist, Francis stresses that the sacrament is a symbol of the poverty and humility of Christ. He writes: “Behold, each day he humbles Himself as when he came from the royal throne into the Virgin’s womb; each day He himself comes down to us, appearing humbly; each day He comes down from the bosom of the Father upon the altar in the hands of the priest. As he revealed himself to the holy apostles in true flesh, so He reveals himself to us now in sacred bread.”

And in the Letter to the Entire Order Francis writes in poetic vein: “Let everyone be struck with fear, let the whole world tremble, and let the heavens exult when Christ, the Son of the living God, is present on the altar in the hands of a priest! O wonderful loftiness and stupendous dignity! O sublime humility! O humble sublimity! The lord of the universe, God and the Son of God, so humbles himself that for our salvation he hides himself under an ordinary piece of bread! Brothers, look at the humility of God, and pour out your hearts before him! Humble yourselves that you may be exalted by him! Hold nothing back of yourselves for yourselves, that he who gives himself totally to you may receive you totally!”

Forgiving others - being good to ourselves.

Some days after I had given a talk on forgiveness recently, a man told me that he had being putting into practice what we had shared on Christian forgiveness. He had realised that he was carrying hurts and anger about people in the past. The talk had uncovered hidden resentments, and he had begun to pray for those people. And as he continued to do so he said he felt emotional and the tears came - a frequent sign of grace working deep within - and he experienced great peace. To be able to put down the burdens of the past is always a precious gift.

God does not ask the impossible from us. Jesus tells us: "Pray for those who treat you badly; bless and do not curse them."   So taking the Lord at His word and trusting in His grace we do just that. We don't have to like someone before we pray for them. Nor do we have to wait till our emotions are no longer raw before doing so.  We can simply say: "Lord bless him/her and grant me peace!"  It is very hard to hate someone y0u are praying for. Such a choosing of forgiveness opens a space for the Spirit of the Lord to bring us healing and peace.

Feelings follow the action. Forgiveness is not firstly about our emotions; it is a choice, a decision, an act of the will. If the wound is deep we may need to make that choice again and again until the heart is free.

Resentment keeps the hurt alive in our hearts, controls our moods and extends our pain. We are being very good to ourselves when we make the decision to let go of any bitterness we are nursing. Resentment is an acid that destroys its container. The container is our own heart!

Learning to Forgive

St Francis, it was said, 'walked this earth as the Pardon of God.' Immersed in God's healing goodness he radiated mercy and forgiveness. And he constantly echoes the teachings of Jesus on the necessity of cleansing our hearts of all resentment, bitterness, and of the desire for revenge. 'Since you speak of peace, all the more so should you have peace in your hearts.'

I find that when I speak on this topic it is always listened to with great eagerness. Very many people carry the hurts and wounds of the past with them, often from childhood and family. Those closest to us can hurt us most deeply precisely because they are close to us, and what they say and do has great power to build us up or tear us down.

Because these memories and emotions are hard to face they are often denied. But just because something is covered does not mean it is healed.  Just because something is denied does not mean it is not influencing our daily living. Just because someone is dead does not mean the hurt is dead.

As we grow in our friendship with the Lord there comes a time when the burdens of hurt and anger carried from the past need to be recognised, acknowledged and, by God's grace, put down in forgiveness. It is a law of life, hard but true, that when a deep injury has been done to us we do not find healing and peace until we forgive.

Forgiveness is medicine for our hearts.  With forgiveness we are freed from the cold grip of the past. Forgiving we regain our souls.

Power for daily living

The Acts of the Apostles has been called the Fifth Gospel, the Gospel of the Holy Spirit, because of the strong presence of the Spirit on every page. 

The Spirit of God is shown guiding and fortifying the Christian community and the lives of individual disciples in dramatic ways. We see the Spirit of Jesus direct the mission of the apostles in a very definite manner – through miracles, signs and wonders.

The Risen Lord offered power from on high, and that divine indwelling is very manifest in what we read in Acts.  

              

The Spirit of the Lord is still with us, and we can still experience His presence and power in remarkable ways. Normally, however, in our lives we look for this gift of the Spirit in the less miraculous, in the less extraordinary. 

The power given from on high is revealed in our lives

in the strength to follow daily in the footsteps of the Lord,

in the miracle of grace at work in courageous Christ-like choices,

in a life that shows forth the beauty of holiness.

 Miracles and the extraordinary still are part of the life of the Church of God. But we do not look only there for the signs of the Spirit’s presence. The vision and courage, the fidelity and love that are required in daily discipleship are the truest signs of the might of the Spirit at work in a human heart.

As an old Christian verse puts it:

Moment by moment I am kept by His love.

Moment by moment I have light for my feet,

Moment by moment I have power from on high.

Fan the flame

“Fan into a flame the gift given you… the Spirit of love, power and self-control” (2Tim 1:6,7)

The ongoing experience of Pentecost is meant to be a reality in the life of the Church and of individual believers. It is the ever-deepening awareness of all that God promises us as our inheritance, in which there is always more that we can receive.

"If you but knew the gift of God!" Faith and desire open us to the divine gift.

Expectant faith is not about new efforts.

It is a new desire. 

Growing in expectant faith is growing in desire. 

The more we desire, the more we ask for.

The more we ask for the more we receive.

The more we receive, the more we are capable of giving.

We are invited to move deeper and deeper into the stream of the Spirit.

Trust releases the power of God to act in us. But the Lord can only fill the empty. Am I expecting the Lord to fill a container that is already filled? Hand over all the burdens - the fears, the hurts taken on, the resistance to His grace and will.

Let Him prepare your heart.

Christ wants it for you more than you want if for yourself – the fruit of the Cross of Jesus is the Spirit poured out.

In these days of grace we asked to be available to recreating Love – in simple prayer we open ourselves to the Divine.

Look Beyond...

There is a beautiful song about the Eucharis that invites us to: “Look beyond the bread you eat -see you Saviour and your God. Look beyond the Cup you drink – see His blood poured out as love.” 

We are invited constantly to look beyond in our Christian living and see the deeper reality present. St Francis used to speak of the “eyes of the Spirit”. 

Before the crib – look beyond the helpless infant – see your God.

Before the Cross – look beyond the horror – see your salvation.

Before the altar – look beyond the obvious – see your Risen Lord.

This is how God works – He calls forth faith, a sight that is deeper than the merely visible, that does not depend only on outward appearances.

We need the same faith vision, the same eyes of the Spirit, the same light of God when it comes to the Church. We need to look beyond the institution heavy with history, the Church whose failures are trumpeted by the world, the sins of whose members are only too obvious at times.

There is an old Latin saying about the Church - Ecclesia semper reformanda  - the Church is always being reformed, always in need of reform. And the powerful image of Jesus cleansing the Temple has been used again and again throughout the centuries by popes and prophets, saints and reformers working for that renewal. 

But even as we pray and work for that deeper renewal we must not hesitate to view the Church in the light of faith. In the Creed each Sunday we profess our faith in the Church; we profess that it is not merely a human institution but the work of God.

The community of faith, made up of us ordinary human beings, is being built into the temple of the Holy Spirit. Each gathering of the Lord’s disciples especially for the Eucharist, weak and broken as we are, is truly that sacred space from which living water flows to heal and refresh.