VIII. THE FOURTH AND FIFTH EXISTENTIAL STATES: UNCOVENANTED CHRISTIAN GRACES. BEATIFYING AND TRANSFIGURING GRACE

It now remains to speak of grace as it is in souls that are touched by Christ at a distance.

1. In Palestine Christ, through the graces issuing from contact with him, established the Church in its completed state. At that time, too, he sent to each individual soul in all parts of the world hidden graces which, in so far as they were accepted, caused the Church to exist in those parts, in an initial state, imperfect and almost unseen.

Before his Ascension, Jesus sent his apostles to the whole world: 'Go and teach all nations'. They were to 'be witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth' (Acts i. . 'Behold,' he said, 'I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world' (Mt. xxviii). Wherever the hierarchy exists, with its powers of order and jurisdiction, it dispenses the graces of contact we have spoken of, which constitute the Church in its completed state. And as the disciples were sent by Christ to all nations, the Church, by right and normally, should exist in its full, perfect and completed form all over the earth.

2 But what actually happened? The complete and final descent of Truth and Love, at the Incarnation and at Pentecost, aroused a corresponding fury in the forces of evil. Arrayed against the evangelical forces of light and love were the forces of error, hatred and falsehood, eager to wage the great warfare spoken of in the Apocalypse, which is to last till the end of time. What are these forces of evil, and in whom do they dwell?

They are at work, first of all, among Christians themselves, in those who should bear witness and fail to do so, who sleep when they should be vigilant, who even betray their Master. They are active in each one of us. In so far as we deserve the reproach: 'You call yourself Christian, and you are no better than others', the witness we ought to bear is clouded over, the light that should pass through us is obstructed. How many there are who watch us, and who would become Christians could they but sense the source of life within us. A Jewish doctor who professed no belief once said to me: 'I have both Catholic and Protestant patients, and others who believe in nothing, and in each group I find some who are admirable and others intolerable. What conclusion do you expect me to draw about your Church?' I could only say that the Catholics he found intolerable would be still more so if they were not Catholics. Do we realize that sometimes a single truly Christian action is enough to shake a soul to its depths? During the war, there was a countrywoman in France who hid a Chinese communist. He tried to undermine her faith. She answered him: 'You are a learned man, you have studied a lot; all I know is that Jesus told us to love others as he loved them.' One day a number of fugitives, communists too, fleeing from the German advance, asked this woman for shelter. She gave them her room, and went to sleep in the passage, after giving them all the bedclothes she had. Very early the next day they stole away, taking everything with them. The Chinaman was furious, and watched the woman carefully, but saw not the slightest sign of anger. He there and then decided to become a Catholic, and is now a priest; all through the acts of one poor woman. Acts like this should make up the daily life of all Christians; men should be able to see the Church through us as through a transparent glass. Gandhi once said that it was not Christians but Hindus who could harm Hinduism. It is Christians and not Hindus who can injure Christianity.

3. The forces of evil are at work too, of course, in those who are not Christians. When the apostles made their way to the different countries, they came up against the various religions that had arisen from the aberration of paganism. This, as we have said, lay not in denying God, but in submerging him in the universe; so that, with division into separate countries, the divinity also was divided, and even each separate family had its god. This was the case in ancient Greece and Rome, where men had forgotten the divine transcendence. Today, after twenty centuries, these religious structures have not disappeared. Look at all the parts of Africa and Asia that have never been evangelized. There exist whole areas where orientation by the Magisterium and sacramental contact cannot penetrate, so that, if there is grace in these parts, it is not the grace of contact, sacramental and orientated, not fully Christian and making men like Christ. But is there, in fact, grace at all? This is what we shall now try to discover.

4. Besides these unreduced fastnesses of pagan culture, there have arisen in the course of time others which present fresh obstacles to the mission of the hierarchical powers and the spreading of graces of contact. One of these isJudaism. Its error consists in the fact that the Jews, the bearers of the Messianic promise, did not recognize the Messias when he came. There was, indeed, a 'remnant' which formed the Church, made up originally only of Jews, the Virgin Mary and the apostles. But the mass of the Jewish people, through the fault of its leaders, could not see in the Gospel the fulfilment of the promises made to Israel for a thousand years. The Jews fell into the error of a branch which, when its flower appears, fails to recognize itself therein, and, in its blindness, rejects it and turns back to its roots. In this way a new religious body was established, the Judaism of the present, which dates back two thousand years. It does not deviate in the same way as the religions of the Gentiles who, as pantheists or polytheists, merged God in the world. Judaism deviates not in denying the transcendence of the Creator, since it actually invokes this transcendence against the Messias, saying that he blasphemed in proclaiming himself the Son of God (Mt. xxvi. 63-65). God, whose plans are beyond the reach of every understanding, had decided, when the time came, to come to the help of his people by sending them more than a temporal saviour, more than a prophet: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting' (John iii. 16). It was this revelation that was a stumbling-block to Israel. The mystery of a divine life that superabounds in three Persons, of a divine Person who became incarnate and died on the cross to save the world, was wholly repugnant to it. The people that had for two thousand years confessed the transcendence of creative Love rejected that of redemptive Love. Into such a religious body the Church cannot, through her hierarchy, insert graces that are sacramental and orientated.

5. Next, there has arisen the extraordinary religious phenomenon of Islam. How can we define it? It claims to uphold the monotheism of Abraham, and to be descended from him through Israel, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. It accepts the virgin birth of Christ, and acknowledges him as the Word, the Messias. But the Jews and Christians have distorted the Scriptures; the true Torah and Gospel are preserved in the Koran. Mohammed is the seal of prophecy.

In reality, Islam is not directly derived from Abraham. Mohammed made contact with Judaism as it was after Christ, Judaism closed to the revelation of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and already ossified as it were; this is what he preached to the various pagan peoples. They received, in this way, the revelation of the unity of God, and the place of their pilgrimages was not Jerusalem but Mecca. We may say that this religiow institution is an offshoot of Judaism 'an acolyte of Judaism'. Jews and Moslems are like brothers at enmity; such is their emotional antipathy to each other. But yet they are alike. Both proclaim a divine transcendence that excludes the Trinity and the Incarnation. Both entangle the divine revelation concerning the salvation of the world with the temporal destinies of their own people. Here again we see a vast religious institution in which the admixture of grave errors with sublime truths blocks the way to the apostolic message. So the graces of contact that this message alone can bring are ruled out from the beginning.

6. Later the dissident Christian bodies arose. Can we hold that those persons who originated them were in error but blameless? That may possibly have been the case with some. Other leaders were, in all probability, culpable before God, and appear so even to us. These are strictly speaking heresiarchs, who knowingly rent the unity of the Church and of the Christian faith. Thus new bodies were established, retaining many Christian truths, such as respect for the Scriptures, the validity of certain sacraments, but were, none the less, schismatic. We are told that "aqua regia" is the only liquid capable of dissolving gold, so the dissident bodies may be likened to a mixture of gold and "aqua regia". They retard, with varying effectiveness, the forward movement of the hierarchy in its mission of teaching all nations and baptising them. As a consequence of the Protestant revolt, many dogmas have been whittled away: the Quakers, for instance, do not even have baptism. These are regions where hindrances are placed to some at least of the riches offered by the Magisterium and are therefore closed, wholly or in part, to the graces of contact.

7. As well as the worlds of the pre-Christian religions, of Judaism, Islam, the dissident sects, we have to notice something quite different, the terrible rise of an atheist world. As Nietzsche said: 'There are now perhaps ten to twenty million men among the various nations of Europe, who no longer believe in God. Is it too much to ask that they should beckon to one another?' This has now taken place. For more than a century human history has seen a positive atheism rise like a tempest, an antitheism claiming to be the whole of man's life and to change the whole face of the earth. The origin of this atheism is to be found in a wholly deliberate act of choice, an inverted act of faith, a truly religious commitment in reverse.

8. What is God's attitude towards all the religious bodies we have just mentioned? He is Love (I John iv. 16). He is 'the true light which enlighteneth every man' (John i. 9). He ascended the cross to draw all men to himself (John xii. 32). God, our Saviour, 'desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth' (I Tim. ii. 4).

What, then, does he do in face of all the various obstacles to the apostolic preaching? He enters into a dialogue with each of the souls caught in the toils of those worlds where truth and error, light and darkness, are entangled together. Since graces of contact are out of the question, he sends them graces at a distance.

These are themselves 'Christian graces by derivation'. As such, they are in a way superior to the 'Christian graces by anticipation' given in the age that waited for Christ's coming. They directly prepare the soul for heaven, and not just for the Limbo of the Fathers of the Old Testament. But can it be called normal for grace to come to men at a distance, when Christ two thousand years ago sent his disciples on his mission to the ends of the earth, with the solemn promise of his help? No, it is abnormal that there should be on earth lands and souls not yet affected by the preaching of the Gospel. That God should use a roundabout way, that he should send to places where normal graces of contact do not reach abnormal uncovenanted graces, graces at a distance, is a sign at one and the same time of his infinite desire for our salvation and of the power of evil in our world.

To the extent to which these uncovenanted graces are accepted, they set up a regime in which the Church can exist, not of course in its normal and completed state, but in a rudimentary or, rather, abnormal and restricted state.

This idea of restriction is pertinent here, because these souls should have a better fate. They are living in an imperfect regime of uncovenanted graces. This is the fourth existential state of divine grace.

9. When given at a distance, the grace which comes from Christ passes, in a sense, over the hierarchy to knock at the hearts of men. Is it, then, really given independently of the Church? Yes, in a sense it is. Yet it is the entire Church that entreats Our Lord to send the rays of his grace into the souls she is unable to reach. When we say, 'Thy kingdom come!' with a deep sense of the meaning of words, that is what we ask for. Admittedly and rightly we think first of the missionaries who carry the truth and the sacraments to distant lands to establish the Church in its normal state. But even today people die in regions missionaries have never reached. We pray God that they may be saved. The fully established Church prays, in her holiest members, in her liturgy and wherever she is truly alive, 'for the salvation of the whole world' (Offertory of the Mass). While waiting for the time, she says, when I can go and bring them the full message of the Gospel, do thou, O God, go before me and send thy uncovenanted graces to these souls and these lands. Hence she has her share in the distribution of these graces which, wherever they are received, establish her in her rudimentary, imperfect, restricted condition.

10. Those who accept these uncovenanted graces are already spiritually part of the Church, but in a rudimentary, restricted fashion. All the factors in these groups that are compounded of error and sin remain outside the Church; and all they have of truth and holiness belong to her. Wherever assent is given to God by complete acceptance of his graces at a distance, the lamp of Christianity is lit. The person in question remains a Buddhist, a Jew, a Moslem or a dissident Christian; he still belongs corporally to the religious group of pre-Christian times, or to Judaism, Islam, Protestantism, but he is already spiritually of the Church. He will begin, even unawares, to act on his surroundings in order to change them; he will spontaneously stress what is authentic in them and gradually discard the rest. The Church finds in such souls hidden allies and accomplices, and begins to acquire through them, even within these alien groups, a certain visibility.

11. I recall the processions of pilgrims in South India who go year by year to the sanctuary of the god Vishnu, whose statue the priests anoint with oil and perfume. A few years ago, the hymns of these pilgrims were translated into English, and parts of them into French as well. They were written by a man of humble rank, in the middle of the seventeenth century of our era. They are superb:

How can our minds grasp him of whose light the sun and moon are but a reflection? This God is our God, soul of souls, close beside us, in us and around us.... This God of love can be reached only by love. . .. We have fashioned a Vishnu of stone, but the stone is not Vishnu; adoration is given to Vishnu, and the stone remains in the stone figure. . . . It is your glory, O God, to be called the Saviour of sinners.... The saints call you the Lord of those who despair; and when I heard it, my heart took courage.

Among these pilgrims there are, doubtless, some who dwell mainly on the words of the hymns and who perform the traditional rites and sacrifices simply as a matter of custom, and others who pay little attention to the meaning of the hymns and whose main concern is with the idolatrous practices. The former, unlike the latter, belong spiritually to Christ and the Church.

12. Another example is furnished by Judaism. 'As concerning the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake; but as touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance' (Rom. xi. 28-29). The day will come when God will bring them into the Church. In the errant course they are now pursuing, divine grace never ceases to try to stir their hearts, and wc find among them great examples of holiness. Such were the Hassidim—the word means 'pious'—who lived in Polish ghettos at the beginning of the eighteenth century, at times in extreme poverty. De Menasce gives an excellent account of them in his book, "Quand Israel aime Dieu". Some of them even arrived at the idea of co-redeeming love, an idea foreign to Judaism. Though they never spoke of Christ, their utterances have a distinctly Christian resonance. Let us look at one or two passages from the book I have just mentioned.

The window and the looking-glass

A man whose heart was hardened by wealth went to the rabbi Eisig. The rabbi said to him: 'Look out of the window, and tell me what you see in the street.' 'I see people walking up and down.' Then he gave him a looking-glass: 'Look in this and tell me what you see.' The man replied: 'I see myself.' 'So you don't see the others any more? Consider that the window and the mirror are both made of glass; but, since the mirror has a coating of silver, you only see yourself in it, while you can see others through the transparent glass of the window. I am very sorry to have to compare you to these two kinds of glass. When you were poor, you saw others and had compassion on them; but, being covered with wealth, you see only yourself. It would be much the best thing for you to scrape off the silver-coating so that you can once again see other people.'

The best way of preaching

. . . is to make yourself feel that you are merely listening, and that the world of the Word is speaking in you without you yourself speaking; for no sooner do you hear yourself speaking than the Word becomes silent!

Pure love

His life (that of Rabbi Dov Beer of Mezeritz) began in fearful poverty; his wife found this hard to bear. One day he was so touched by her tears and those of his children that, for the first time, he complained of his wretched state. At once, the legend says, a voice was heard from heaven announcing that his complaining had forfeited him his place in the world to come. At first, he was very much upset, but, after a little reflection, he gave signs of great joy. 'From now on', he said, 'I shall serve God with a purer heart, without hope of reward.' Then the heavenly voice was heard again: 'Your part in the world to come is now restored to you. But be careful in future not to complain when your children arouse your pity, for your own pity is not keener than God's.'

Joy and sadness

The rabbi of Sassow used to say: 'What is it to be a hasid? It is to be like a child who is, at the same moment, in tears and yet happy. The man who aims at real holiness should lament when he thinks of his sins and his depravity, in so far as he has offended God, and rejoice when he thinks he has been created to serve the Lord of heaven and to keep the commandments he has given us in his faith. Of itself each is harmful to man, for constant sadness begets melancholy and doubt and, on the other hand, a man who is always cheerful cannot devote himself to the service of God and the keeping of his commandments. So we have to endeavour to be, at one and the same time, sad and joyful, so as to rise to the sphere of true fear and true love.'

These devout Jews rediscovered the necessity of suffering for others, already suggested in the revelation of the Old Testament, for example, in the prayer of Abraham interceding for Sodom and Gomorrha (Gen. xviii. 22-32). Abraham had begun, as it were, to struggle with God: 'If there be fifty just men in the city, shall they perish withal? . . . And the Lord said: If I find in Sodom fifty just, I will spare the whole place. . . . If there be five and forty? I will not destroy it if I find five and forty. If twenty . . . if ten? . . . I will not destroy it.' But ten just men could not be found. The prayer of intercession already gives a Christian tonality to the Old Testament, a kind of foreshadowing of co- redemptive prayer.

Consider Moses, too, when he came down from Sinai and saw the people adoring the golden calf. He was angry, and broke the tables of the Law. God threatened to turn away from the people, saying that Moses himself could not tolerate them any longer. But Moses pleaded with God not to destroy them, and to have compassion on them (Exodus xxxii. 19-31).

Remember also the wonderful fifty-third chapter of Isaias telling of the 'man of sorrows' who would bear our iniquities and give his life in expiation and by his sufferings justify multitudes.

With the Old Testament we are dealing with a normal regime, that of Christ's grace by anticipation. At present, with the people of Israel we have an abnormal regime, that of uncovenanted Christian graces. Yet it was these graces that enabled the Hassidim to rediscover the revelation of love proclaimed in the Old Testament in the Canticle of Canticles and in the intimate communications of Osee on the relations of God and his people. At one and the same time, they realized anew the meaning of co-redemptive suffering.

13. As I look at Islam I see, long before the Hassidim who belong roughly to the early seventeenth century, a number of souls who, by Christian graces received at a distance, began also to rediscover the religion of love, in a purely juridical environment dominated by the Koran. One of these was Hallaj (d. 922), who held that the man who had found love should not keep it for himself but proclaim it in the public squares. His arms were cut off, and he was then crucified. It was necessary to safeguard the Koranic legalism from any manifestation of a religion of love.

Certain texts of the time of Hallaj seem to show beyond all doubt the presence of a genuine mysticism of love in Islam. They are like suns shining in the midst of the world of the Koran:

O my God! my secret is known to Thee: I am he who desires Thee (Dzoul, d.859).

To Thee, in my heart, a place is kept apart. All reproach is indifferent to me, since I love Thee (Ibid).

For Thy love, I wish to be Thy victim. It is Thy absence I find it impossible to bear (lbid).

Drink thou the wine of His love for thee: in such wise that it will inebriate thee with thy love for Him (Ibid).

What a difference there is between him who goes to the feast for the feast's sake and him who goes to it to meet the Beloved! (Yahya, d.872).

An atom of love for God is worth more than seventy years of adoration without love (Ibid).

O my God! if Thou askest me at the day of judgment: O my servant, what is it in me that ravished you? I will answer: Lord, Thy goodness to me (Ibid).

O my God! Thou knowest I cannot endure hell, and I know I am not good enough for paradise. What strategy can I use, other than thy forgiveness? (Ibid).

For thirty years, I went in search of God, and, at the end of that time, on opening my eyes, I discovered it was He who was looking for me (Bisthami, d.875).

On hearing a muezzin calling to prayer and a dog barking, he (Al Nouri, d.907) said: The muezzin calls on God with indifference, by routine because it is his business to do so, while the dog really praises God.

These mystics were drawn spontaneously to stress the place given in the Koran to Jesus, Son of Mary. They said that Mohammed is the greatest of the prophets, but the real saint is Jesus. They rediscovered some of the characteristics of Christian love. The reason for this we know well; Christian but uncovenanted graces crowded into their hearts. These graces may be powerful, but they are hindered from developing. If they came under the beneficent influence of the hierarchy, these graces at a distance would be succeeded by graces of contact, sacramental and orientated graces, fully 'Christian' and able to make men like Christ. They would be like a rosetree kept for a long time in an unsuitable climate which, suddenly transplanted to a sunny region, can show of what it is capable and blossom to the full.

14. We must emphasize an important aspect of the different religious bodies we have mentioned and, within which the Church is able to exist in a rudimentary and restricted way. The further they are from the Church, the less favourable in like proportion are the zones they form around her, to the penetration of Christian graces.

A first zone, nearest to the Church, is represented by Orthodoxy. There the seven sacraments are preserved and, in consequence, grace is present in its sacramental richness. Is it orientated? Yes, because the Orthodox possess the Gospel, the Creed, and a great liturgy. But not fully so, because they do not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the sovereign pontiff. They accept, for example, (at any rate some of them do) the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, but only by individual choice, because in their view since the seventh general council the Church, divided between East and West, is no longer capable of defining doctrines. Grace with them, then, is sacramental, but not fully orientated.

A second zone is represented by Protestantism, which has preserved faith in the divinity of Christ. Within it is an immense void. Only two sacraments remain, Baptism and Matrimony, and the latter most Protestants have ceased to consider a sacrament. As to the Last Supper, which they look on as a sacrament, it is no longer one in our view, since they have rejected the mystery of the Real Presence in the Eucharist and broken the continuity of transmission of the power of Order. They can, therefore, have the sacramental graces of Baptism and Matrimony. These are orientated solely in the degree in which they succeed in abiding by the profound meaning of Scripture.

Then there is modern Judaism, in so far as it is faithful to the great prophetic proclamation of the divine transcendence and is reserved by God for ultimate return to the Messias it rejected: 'And so all Israel should be saved, as it is written: There shall come out of Sion he that shall deliver, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob' (Rom. xi. 26).

Then Islam, a kind of facsimile of Judaism which also venerates the divine transcendence.

Finally, India, less pure from the outset, because there is a general climate of near-pantheism; but divine grace is strong enough to overcome all obstacles.

15. Will this division between graces of contact and graces at a distance persist till the end of time? Judaism has lasted two thousand years in its present state, Islam thirteen centuries, Orthodoxy nine centuries, Protestantism four. These resistancegroups are certainly tenacious. May we hope that all who shall have accepted grace will one day be united under the hierarchy? Or will the cockle right to the end be mingled with the wheat in the Father's field? Is it necessary that there should always be sects, divisions, so that men may not be proud in their possession of the truth, to keep them on the alert, to make them pray for the world with anguish in their hearts? The answer to these questions rests solely with God.

16. To conclude, we must say something of the supreme existential state of grace, its state now in heaven, to which it will be united at the end of the world.

Whether given by anticipation before Christ, or by derivation after Christ, whether transmitted by contact or at a distance, after death grace will be fully developed, beatifying, transfiguring. All the differences, prevailing in the present world, will be swept away.

Faith and hope will give place to possession and the beatific vision. 'Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him, because we shall see him as he is' (I John iii. 2). It is through Christ's sacred humanity that the elect will receive this beatifying, supremely Christian grace, which will plunge them directly into the very heart of the Trinity. Then they will see the mystery of the Incarnation, no longer by ascending from Christ's humanity to his divinity, but, as God himself sees it, by descending from his divinity to his humanity, to his Mystical Body and to the universe finally glorified.

As the grace which, on Thabor, suddenly sent forth upon Christ its transfiguring rays, so the grace of his Mystical Body, the Church, committed to the world on the morrow of the fall and gathered up in the course of the centuries, will suddenly reveal, at the last moment of time, the fullness of its transfiguring power. It will transfigure the risen bodies and the entire universe: 'For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality' (I Cor. xv. 53).

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone, and the sea is now no more. And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of the heaven from God.... And I heard a great voice from the throne saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people; and God himself with them shall be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and death shall be no more, nor mourning nor crying nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away. And he that sat on the throne said: Behold I make all things new (Apoc. xxi. 1-5).


LIKE I SAID IN THE OP IF ANYONE IS NOT INTERESTED IN READING ALL OF THE DOCUMENT THEN JUST IGNORE THIS POST. HAVING SAID THAT SINCE GAREE SEEMS TO BE INTERESTED IN WHAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TEACHES ON THE MEANING OF GRACE HERE IT IS. 

I am not going to debate with those who take bits and pieces out of the article and out of context. The whole article must be read to get a "clear understanding" of what the Catholic Church teaches on grace.







     

Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out!