We live in a world ordered by cycles; one day rolls into another, as weeks, months and years pass by. Every year divides into four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. The Church’s year is similarly cyclical - at various times we celebrate our Lord’s birth, baptism, resurrection and ascension. 

Easter offers an opportunity to consider anew the most significant event in human history: Christ’s resurrection. In the current season we can reflect on the new life which has been bestowed upon us through Christ’s sacrifice. 

We can look at the Easter story as we would a large painting, surveying all the details and noticing things we may have missed the year before. Although the cross upon which our Savior died was an instrument of death, it has now been transformed into a power plant expressing God’s redemption of the sins of the world. Emanating from the cross, as light beaming into the darkest corners of sin, is the grace of God.

Grace submits to many definitions. The Catholic Church says that “The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.” The author of the letter to the Hebrews commends us to “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16) God told St. Paul that “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 9)

There is nothing we can do to earn grace - indeed, our sinfulness requires grace to heal and restore us. One of the disciplines of faith is to develop an awareness of the many ways grace operates through our lives and in our relationships. The most important of these relationships is the one we have with God, which is made effective through prayer. This practice of prayer should be coupled with a commitment to leading a grace-filled life.

You can tell when grace has taken root in someone by their attitude of gratitude. This attitude requires humility, because the grace-filled soul is one who knows her need for God. Under grace one can identify and even expect God to be at work in one’s life, in protecting, challenging, testing and blessing. Ever wondered why you met someone who happened to change how you thought about God? Grace mysteriously instigates these encounters and fashions out of them new understandings and friendships. 

Grace gives wisdom to see where our true treasure lies - in simple friendships, in gratitude for Jesus and the church, and in a conscious will not to be drawn into malevolent and negative thoughts and actions. The closer one gets to God, the more one will be assailed by the adversary. As Paul learned, God’s grace depends on us accepting our inherent weakness as human beings, and not trying to solve every problem ourselves.

With grace also comes peace: the two are like the left and the right hand of the body. In a grace-filled life, peace is the reward. Moreover, someone who seeks peace lives under grace, since it is the peacemakers who are blessed. (Matthew 5:9)

The Church is the place where grace-filled communities are gathered and built up into the kingdom of heaven on earth. As people of God we are receiving God’s grace so that as people of grace we can tell the world about God. The world will benefit greatly from a little more grace! Give thanks and praise, and consider how God wants you to be the agent of his grace in the world.

With Eastertide blessings

Fr. David