Choice Graces

PERHAPS on reading the beautiful selections from the doctor’s letters I have somewhat envied his union with God. Perhaps there arose in my mind the question: “What would I have to do to achieve such close intimacy with God?”

First of all, I must remember that such a degree of union with God is in the domain of gratuitous gifts. Our Lord gives them or does not give them as He sees fit. That is His own concern. In themselves, these gifts are no forecast of sanctity in the person who receives them. Someone can be quite perfect and never receive these favors; a person can be most faithful and attentive but either because of special difficulties of temperament or of capacity or because of God’s permission he will never receive like gifts.

By the very fact that they are gratuitous, they are inherently out of proportion with human efforts. They are liberalities of God that we are powerless to merit in the formal sense of the term. I am walking along the boulevard; I meet several poor persons along the way; I give something to the second not to the first, to the fifth and not to the fourth. To none of them do I owe a thing. I have bestowed a favor pure and simple and no one can lay claim to my bounty as his due.

So too with the special favors we are considering. They manifest the munificence of God and do not prove the holiness of the recipient.

It is evident though that if God is free to bestow extraordinary graces according to His own will, in general, He dispenses them to those who by their generosity have given assurance beforehand that these favors will fall on good ground. If by right they are purely gratuitous, in fact they most often recompense a generosity that is particularly ardent, a devotedness and a striving that has been heroically maintained.

In practice, I should let God play His hand. He is well-versed in what He is doing. I should not presume to dictate to Him the method He should follow. I can play my hand too. His very own specialty is liberality; mine should be generous love. I ought to be bent on giving, not on receiving.

If in the course of my life of striving, God is pleased to give me a keener relish of Him, an understanding of Him beyond my knowledge of His perfections, a love for prayer and for sacrifices He will have free sway in me. I shall praise Him with my whole soul; but it is not to win these favors that I intend to push my fervor to its peak.

If, on the contrary, He lets me on the level of common prayer and the ordinary state of the general run of people; if He even abandons me to a spell of aridity—a common trial of earth—either for periods of time or perhaps permanently, I shall cast myself upon His love and beg Him to insure my faith in Him and to preserve my fidelity. I know what I am worth—not very much.

The soldier ought to serve. If his Captain notices him and puts him on the list for the Legion of Honor, fine! A red ribbon, however, adds nothing to the value of a man. He is worth what he gives and not what he receives.

I shall strive to give much.

JOHN M. A. FEARNS, S.T.D. Censor Librorum

__Imprimatur: __✠ FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN Archbishop of New York June 1951

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