Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter

by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Form a plan, it shall be thwarted;
make a resolve, it shall not be carried out,
for “with us is God!”.

(ISAIAH 8:10)

“In a masterful book on grace, author Piet Fransen suggests that we can test how well we understand grace by gauging our reaction to this story:

Imagine a man who, during his whole life, is entirely careless about God and morality. He’s selfish, ignores the commandments, ignores all things religious, and is basically consumed with pursuing his own pleasure – wine, sex, and song. Then, just hours before his death, he repents of his irresponsibility, makes a sincere confession, receives the sacraments of the Church, and dies inside that conversion. 

What’s our immediate reaction to that story? Isn’t it wonderful that he received the grace of conversion before he died? Or, more likely: the lucky beggar, he got away with it! He got to have all that pleasure and still gets to go to heaven!   

If we felt the latter emotion, even for a moment, we have never deeply understood the concept of grace. Rather, like the older brother in the Prodigal Son, we are sill seeing life away from God’s house as fuller than life inside God’s house, we’re still doing the right things mostly out of bitter duty, and we’re secretly envying the amoral. But if this is true, we must be gentle with ourselves. This is an occupational hazard for good, faithful people.
 

We need to be honest in admitting that, despite our real goodness and fidelity, such a reaction indicates that we’re still far from being full saints” (34).