Grace: A Reflection

Just what is grace? In this day and age I believe that many have lost the sense of what grace is and how it transforms lives. Grace is far more than a “get out of jail free card” or a magic wand. Isn’t it perhaps an invitation into a deeper relationship with ourselves, with God, and with neighbor? The following quote from Thomas Merton has given me much to ponder and so I share it with you dear reader. Perhaps we can deepen that relationship with God, ourselves, and our neighbors in a time filled with so much division.

Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God. Grace is the peace of friendship with God and if it does not necessarily bring us a felt peace, it nevertheless gives us every reason to be at peace, if we could only understand and appreciate what it means. Grace means that there is no opposition between man and God, and that man is able to be sufficiently united within himself to live without opposition to God. Grace is friendship with God. — Thomas Merton in The New Man