Grace

Spiritual Maxim # 3. The greater the perfection to which a soul aspires,

the more dependent is she upon divine grace, and this

grace becomes more necessary every moment because

without it the soul can do nothing. The world, the flesh

and the Devil together wage so fierce and unintermitting

a war that, without actual grace and a humble

reliance thereon, the soul would be dragged down in

spite of herself. Such dependence seems hard to human

nature, but grace makes it acceptable and a refuge.

My name means "full of grace." I admit I am not very conscious of that grace within me. I have to make an effort to see it in who I am, in what I do. I admit to basing my consciousness of my grace on the response or comments of others.  It seems I do not hear compliments very often. I try very hard to give them to others because they are so very valuable to me.  I hear a lot of criticism. There is a paragraph in my personal copy of Brother Lawrence's Maxims  that is not included in the online version I found to use as a cut and paste for this blog. It is an alternate #2 I guess, and Brother Lawrence speaks of acknowledging our total unworthiness before God. Perhaps it will appear later in the cut and paste version, but I was expecting to write about it yesterday and was ruminating about the sourness I felt about  the worm-like value we should recognize before God. I have a hard enough time putting one foot in front of the other some days with the negative aura around work and home without reading that God expects the same attitude. I understand it intellectually, but I am not happy thinking of myself that way. Perhaps that is why this paragraph was not included in my online access; that author found it uncomfortable amidst the other joys of Lawrence's writings. I hope we shall find an answer to this when our group next meets. but back to grace: this is the watchword of the day; to ask for grace, to expect it will be given because of God's great love for me; to see it in myself and to see it in those around me. Trekking Catholic.