| Meditation Thirty-eight, Fourth Week of November 2003 The Sacramental Dispensation of Grace Begin with prayer to the Holy Spirit Readings: John 3:10–18; Eph. 1:3–10; Heb. 4:14–16; 5:5–10; Catechism 1076–1085 In recent decades there has been a very regrettable loss of the sense of God’s grace in our lives. There is also a great decline in appreciating the sacraments as a source of grace. When people think of grace at all, they are likely to consider it a religious experience, a sense of God’s presence and His working in the individual soul. Certainly such an experience can and should be a reflection of God’s grace in the soul, but that is to restrict the meaning of grace to religious experience. This is a dangerous thing to do because some holy souls, like Mother Teresa, suffer the feeling of God’s absence, a thirst for His presence. This too is a grace, known as the dark night of the soul, but it does not feel like a grace at all. Second, there are people who say they experience the divine presence in various New Age rituals. This, however, is merely a psychological state caused by the conscious control of various neurological factors (like what are called alpha rhythms). In the scriptural sense this is not really grace at all, although God could use it. It rather resembles the uplifting feeling one can have listening to Handel’s Messiah. There is also a sinister experience of a mysterious presence in modern paganism, or Wicca, which is either self-hypnosis or, more dangerous, the actual effect of an evil spirit. For this reason every Christian must avoid and denounce any form of natural religiosity as a substitute for Christian prayer. These things are simply violations of the first commandment. Wicca and allied nonsense may not be just ridiculous; they may be diabolical. The opposite of very subjective experience of grace, authentic, imagined, or even sinister, is God’s plan of salvation. This is our redemption by Christ’s suffering, the washing away of sin by His holy blood and our incorporation into His life, especially by the sacraments He left to the Church to distribute. Because there is not adequate instruction concerning God’s plan of salvation, we need to take a few weeks of meditation on this subject. This aspect of Christ’s work of salvation is called the plan of the sacraments or, to use the theological term, the economy of the sacraments. The word “economy” does not mean money or financial concerns, as it is usually does. Here it means a mysterious plan of God, by which Christ has saved us from eternal loss through the mercy of God. He has done this by His holy human life, which made Him, although utterly sinless Himself, vulnerable to the sins of the world and the evil plans of Satan. His divine love of His Father caused Him to accept death on the Cross, His sacrifice. He forgave His enemies and all the sins of the world by His loving obedience in life and especially in His holy but terrible death. He became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He continues to work in the world as Savior, although He has ascended into the heavenly world. He does this by His word (the New Testament, especially the Gospels) and by His sacraments by which He ministers to His followers. As we go through the sacraments, we will see that He is the one who baptizes, absolves sin, anoints, blesses, and continues His Church, which is like His own body, His mystical body. As we study the Church’s worship and sacraments, given by Christ, let us take our time and grow in appreciation of and gratitude for all that Christ has done for us. Quotation for Meditation From the book on the Holy Spirit by Saint Basil, taken from the Liturgy of the Hours (III), p. 441. When mankind was estranged from him by disobedience, God our Savior made a plan for raising us from our fall and restoring us to friendship with himself. According to this plan, Christ came in the flesh, he showed us the Gospel way of life, he suffered, died on the cross, was buried and rose from the dead. He did this so that we could be saved by imitation of him, and recover our original status as sons of God by adoption. To attain holiness, then, we must not only pattern our lives on Christ’s by being gentle, humble, and patient, we must also imitate him in his death. Taking Christ for his model, Paul said that he wanted to become like him in his death in the hope that he too would be raised from death to life. We imitate Christ’s death by being buried with him in baptism. If we ask what this kind of burial means and what benefit we may hope to derive from it, it means first of all making a complete break with our former way of life, and our Lord himself said that this cannot be done unless a man is born again. In other words, we have to begin a new life, and we cannot do so until our previous life has been brought to an end. When runners reach the turning point on a racecourse, they have to pause briefly before they can go back in the opposite direction. So also when we wish to reverse the direction of our lives there must be a pause, or a death, to mark the end of one life and the beginning of another. Our descent into hell takes place when we imitate the burial of Christ by our baptism. The bodies of the baptized are in a sense buried in the water as a symbol of their renunciation of the sins of their unregenerate nature. Quiet Time and Then Discussion Questions for Meditation 1. Do I think of the great plan of God in redemption, or am I simply following my own religious experience? 2. Do I speak to others about Christ’s work as our Savior? 3. Do I speak up kindly but directly when I see examples of superstition and the occult occurring in the name of religion? Prayer Jesus, my Savior, all my life I have thought of You as my Savior, but have I perceived the meaning of this great mystery? Have I recognized that Your passion and sacrifice have purchased salvation for me and those I love? Give me the gift of Your Holy Spirit in abundance so that in everyday life I may be Your true disciple and witness to the mysteries of salvation accomplished by Your death and Resurrection. Amen. |