Share your grace experience in writing

May 14, 2006 -- Fifth Sunday of Easter

By Bishop Robert Morneau

	Bishop Robert Morneau
	Questions for reflection: 1. How do you put yourself in the path of God's grace? 2. What is your understanding of grace? 3. Are we each God's only child?

It isn't often that books dealing with religious themes make the best-seller list in our secular culture. One of the exceptions is a novel by Marilynne Robinson, Gilead by name (New York: Picador, 2004). A Congregationalist minister writes a long (247-page) letter to his seven-year-old son in which he tells of the history of the family and the struggles of this human life. It is a moving story filled with themes of sin and grace, theological questions of predestination and redemption, and much more.

Several passages might give us a deeper understanding of the Easter season. The minister writes: "I'm not going to force some theory on a mystery and make foolishness of it" (152). The great mystery of our relationship with God does not yield to some abstract theory. Yet it does give way to a simple image: the vine and the branches. Jesus is a superb teacher. With clarity and exactness, it drives home the point that without staying connected to the Source of Life, we can do nothing that will last.

A prayer in the Divine Office captures well an Easter hope: "Lord Jesus, you are the true vine and we are the branches; allow us to remain in you, to bear much fruit, and give glory to the Father."

A second passage: "But I hope you will put yourself in the way of the gift" (114). This is not quite what St. Paul did. Rather, Jesus - the Gift - put Himself in the path of Saul and in that encounter all was changed. Not only did Saul stop persecuting the early Church, he became its major spokesman proclaiming to the world Jesus crucified. The gift Paul encountered was shared with others.

Between Easter and Pentecost we read about how so many people put themselves in the way of the gift, the gift of God's love. Today we call that encounter the sacraments. Through baptism and confirmation, through the Eucharist and anointing, through marriage and reconciliation, through ordination, God's gift of mercy and love is offered for the salvation of the world.

A third passage: "Love is holy because it is like grace - the worthiness of its object is never really what matters" (209). In John's first letter we are given the essentials of Christianity: faith and love. If we believe Jesus and keep His commandment of love, we are authentic disciples. Love is not only like grace, it is grace: God's very life. And as we are well aware, no one is worthy of such a gift. The Easter season is a rich time of reflecting on the mystery of God's grace revealed in Jesus.

One last comment from Robinson's Gilead: "Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child" (245).

It might be an interesting spiritual exercise to write a letter (not necessarily 247 pages) to a son or daughter, a friend or former teacher, telling of your experience of grace in your life, that is, how God has encountered you and changed your life as He did St. Paul; telling of the love you have received or offered; telling of how the metaphor of the vine and the branches impacts on your life. Not only would that letter be revelatory to the recipient, but to you, the sender, it would be a source of great self-knowledge.

(Bp. Morneau is the auxiliary bishop of the Green Bay Diocese and pastor of Resurrection Parish in Allouez.)