Leo Brown: Grace is real, attainable
and free – all we have to do is accept it

Last week I wrote about decision verses feeling when it comes to embracing faith. I had a couple of responses asking about the role of grace in the faith equation. I by no means meant to exclude the sheer essentiality of grace in our faith decisions, but conversely assumed grace to be such a necessary component that it went without mention. This week, after the responses I received, I’d like to take a moment to focus on the prerequisite of grace in our faith and how, I believe, we can cooperate with that grace.

First and foremost, we need to recognize grace for what it is, a free gift. Grace is not earned, it is not exclusive, but rather, available to all who accept this gift. Grace is a supernatural reality that allows us to achieve virtue. As Catholics we recognize seven virtues, temperance, prudence, justice, fortitude, faith, hope and love. Four of these virtues are considered cardinal, or primary, and can be obtained be mere force of will. These are temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude. However, three of these are considered theological. These are faith, hope and love. If we are to ever truly achieve these we can only do so by cooperating with grace. No act of our will independent of the free gift of grace will ever get us there.

This has been my experience. Before becoming a Christian I would often try to will myself into some degree of discipline or self-improving practice. Whether it was reading the M. Scott Peck classic, The Road Less Traveled,” or seeking to discover the ancient paths to holiness through meditating with the Tao Te Ching, I was trying to reach a level of peace that simply wasn’t possible without the gift of grace. Regardless of the rocks under which I looked I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I felt like Bono from U2, feeling I had “climbed the highest mountain and run through the fields.” I thought I had exhausted every option seeing as how I was raised as a Christian and assumed I had been there and done that. What I didn’t know anything about during this quest was what it meant to accept the gift of grace that God wants us all to have.

After hitting a literal rock bottom in my attempts to find truth I finally began giving my Christian roots the chance to be nurtured. I began reading the bible voraciously and actually attempted prayer for the first time in my adult life. What I found, surprisingly enough, was that I was beginning to cooperate with grace. And by doing these simple exercises of prayer and study I was able to open a line of communication with our creator. This is the first step to receiving grace. I say the first step because when we truly cooperate with grace it will begin to look like something, not just in our lives but also in the lives of others. This is why at the pinnacle of the list of virtues is love. Love in the virtuous sense looks nothing like our cultural understanding of love. Culturally, love looks like a desire for something or someone. We love our car, we love ice cream and we love the Cats. These are all because we get something from them.

Grace -illed living has a totally different dynamic. The result of cooperating with grace is that our fulfillment is not derived by what we get but by what we give. The mystical gift of grace opens the opportunity to truly imitate Christ. When we become cooperators with grace, our life resonates with a different timbre. While we certainly still wrestle with our natural tendencies toward selfishness and sin, we are focused on different realities than we knew existed prior to our opening ourselves to grace. It is only through the gift of grace that we can actually begin to make decisions based in faith and not in feeling. It is through the gift of grace that we can rise above our whims and seek to know and follow the will of God.

I heard an amazing homily several years ago from then Archbishop of Cincinnati Daniel Pilarczyk. In his homily the Archbishop talked about this stunning reality from the Gospel of Luke where the Archangel Gabriel addresses Mary as “full of grace.” Now as Catholics, we believe that Mary was preserved from the effects of original sin because God was preparing her to be the ark of the new covenant. Mary would be the new and spotless ark as the bearer of Christ in this world. We recognize this as the Immaculate Conception. This is often confused as the conception of Christ, but this is our understanding of how Mary could have been given the opportunity to give birth to God himself. What Archbishop said about this fullness of grace was revolutional. His take was that while Mary was preserved from sin she still had free will. And the only way for her to have remained full of grace was for her to have fully cooperated with that grace. He then explained that we, too, could be full of grace once we learn to live a life that is gracious. I had never remotely considered this opportunity. By simply recognizing the gift of grace we can begin to accept the gift of grace and thus live a grace filled life.

Graciousness recognizes that we can take no credit for the good things that happen. Graciousness realizes that everything we have is a gift. Graciousness allows us to remove the focus from ourselves and be God and other’s focused. This is the ultimate goal of grace, to arrive at love. Love actualized is pure charity. When we can live in this mode then we are truly cooperating with the gift that Christ gave us on the cross. If we are truly gracious for this gift of ultimate sacrifice we will respond to this gift by following God’s will. The adherence to God’s will is evident in the decisions we make. So to bring this back to last week’s column about decision-making, we can only make faith decisions through this supernatural gift of grace. And we can only accept this gift by realizing the monumental gift that God has given us by being gracious for the sacrifice of Christ.

Grace is real and attainable. Grace is the linchpin of virtue. We can live a life of searching, grasping and struggling, or we can simply decide to be grateful for the gift that God has given us. This is the ultimate decision and the single decision that will truly change our lives.

Leo Brown is a certified Catechist of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lexington and general manager of the Catholic radio station Real Life Radio 1380 AM and 94.9 FM. Leo is a central Kentucky native, a communications graduate from EKU, was formerly known as Freakdaddy at both Double Q and Z103 and has spent close to 15 years in active ministry. Hear Leo daily on Real Life Radio as the host of Diocese Live from 3:10 to 5 p.m.