GRACE AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Lonavla, 9 November 2005
All of us, it seems to me, are Pelagian by birth. At least I was. Only slowly did I discover the meaning of grace. I remember when I discovered that the spiritual life was not, after all, a matter of how much effort I made; there was grace. I remember the impact of Peter de Rosa’s book, Not I, Not I, But the Wind that Blows Through Me: the seagulls being carried by the wind. That was grace: being carried by the wind of the Spirit.
So slowly we discover the meaning of grace. But then a new problem, so well expressed by Evasio so many years ago in Divyadaan: if God is the one who has to work, then I will continue sleeping in my meditation. He did not know it, but this was the same problem expressed by the monks of Hadremetum to St Augustine: if God gives grace, why do superiors have to be after our blood? This is the great problem of grace and freedom, and people have sinned on both sides of the spectrum.
Only slowly, if ever, do we come to a proper synthesis of grace and freedom. It struck me so forcefully one day in Italy: we need not wait for God to act, simply because he has already acted, his grace has already been given to us. It is up to us now to act, to respond to grace, to do our part.
Grace was first a commonsense scriptural category. With the reflection begun by Augustine and completed by Thomas, it became a systematic metaphysical category. Today we prefer experiential categories, and so everywhere there is talk of God-experience or of religious experience. All three ways of speaking have their own validity, though the last mentioned is of recent vintage, having gained popularity only with the Reformation and perhaps with Schleiermacher.
The recent provocation for these reflections was provided by Kenny: why is it that Protestants, and especially the sects, are able to provide our youth with religious experience, and we Catholics are not?
We could put the question to ourselves more directly: have I had a religious experience? If not, what am I doing here?
I am convinced that grace – God’s love – is given to all. St Paul speaks of the love of God being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Jesus speaks of the Spirit as the wind, blowing where it will: whither it comes, where it goes, we do not know.
So grace is given to all. We may or may not respond to it. If we respond, we grow in it, and it goes on to become a habitual state in us, we move into the habitual state of being in love with God.
With grace, or perhaps with the transformation wrought in us by grace (fruit of the dialectic of grace and freedom), we become a new creation in Christ. We are born again into new life. We begin to live a life of faith, hope and charity.
The presence of grace is evidenced by the presence of the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace… By their fruits you will know them, says Jesus. There is a whole tradition of discernment of spirits in the Church, for we have to distinguish between true and false prophets, and good and bad spirits.
Religious experience is an ambiguous term.
Often it refers to the spectacular experiences of grace rather than to the experience of grace across the board.
Often it is identified with merely good feelings, and then such an understanding finds it difficult to make sense of the experience of pain, suffering, darkness and emptiness. Yet there is the witness of John of the Cross and of Mother Teresa. Good feelings, there is certainly place for them in prayer; but perhaps they are only lollipops, which God in his goodness gives to us when we are as yet merely babes in the spiritual life. The entire spiritual journey is far more complex than a mere set of good feelings. Good feelings alone can certainly not be the criteria of the authenticity of religious expeirnce. The experience of grace is, in fact, as large as life, as Lonergan reminds us so beautifully. 3C.
"Experience of grace, then, is as large as the Christian experience of life. It is experience of man's capacity for self-transcendence, of his unrestricted openness to the intelligible, the true, the good. It is experience of a twofold frustration of that capacity: the objective frustration of life in a world distorted by sin; the subjective frustration of one's incapacity to break with one's own evil ways. It is experience of a transformation one did not bring about but rather underwent, as divine providence let evil take its course and vertical finality be heightened, as it let one's circumstances shift, one's dispositions change, new encounters occur, and -- so gently and quietly -- one's heart be touched. It is the experience of a new community, in which faith and hope and charity dissolve rationalizations, break determinisms, and reconcile the estranged and the alienated, and there is reaped the harvest of the Spirit that is '... love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control' (Gal. 5:22)." [3C 32-33.]
Maybe we have truncated the Catholic faith and practice: individual attention, confession; deeper entry into the Eucharist; Eucharistic adoration; true pastoral love and concern and support; family visits; systematic catechism and faith formation.
Religious experience comes to us in two ways: through the Spirit, and through the Son and the Church. For us Salesians, it comes to us through young people, through the poor, through our work with people, through all of life, in fact! Hopkins: there is freshness deep down things… Don Bosco is for us the father of our faith; he generates in us an experience of God. This makes perfect sense when we remember the doctrine of mediation, the role of the Church. The place of Our Lady also makes perfect sense in this light, and together with her our parents, family, friends, boys…
The temptation of the ephemeral and immediate. American religion. The here and now. Spiritual life is a journey. Once one has tasted the Catholic depths, there is no temptation of the sects and of new Age. It is the poverty of our theology that leads to such temptations. As De Smet used to tell me, the problem of Abhishiktananda was his Benedictine theology. The Benedictines have no theology, they only know liturgy. I have never had a crisis of faith; they all want me to have a crisis of faith, it makes for exciting reading, but I cant manufacture one!
Vacillation is a sign of the counterposition.
Response to Kenny:
- William and P. Lourdes should not set the categories; but the gospels and sound Catholic tradition. But: what do the gospels and sound catholic tradition say?
- My PG notes on RE
- My Rome 2001 article.
- Scola and co.
- The rest of my preface to the Research on Catholic youth.
- How to interiorize?
- Lonergan…
- are all ‘once born’ stupid? What about the saints? All twice born? Dominic Savio? Or are we subtly redefining ‘twice born’?
- Still: how to interiorize? Personal spiritual direction, word in the ear, confession, learning to be masters of prayer – like DB. Aim: Sanctity, not twice born. IC MC RC.
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