June Catholic By Grace Article

It's All Grace

Wilda Staton requested the same song each time Dad invited his little Wesleyan congregation to call out their favorite hymn numbers. Mom would nod her head at the request and quickly thumb through the hymnal at the piano. My sister and I watched Wilda as the rest of the congregation began singing “Amazing Grace.” That’s when her eyes always filled with tears, and we would stare at her with concern. Tears without pain or disappointment didn’t make sense to us.

My sister and I sat with Wilda during worship services because Mom was usually seated at the piano and Dad was standing at the podium. The gentle middle aged woman would keep the two of us quiet and happy. We loved her with that fierce love that children sometimes have for grownups who aren’t connected to them through familial ties. That was Wilda. She didn’t have to love us, but we knew she did.

Wilda Staton lived a difficult life. Her husband had died of some disease, the name of which I can no longer remember. Wilda’s failing mother lived with Wilda and her two half-grown sons. Lyndsey and Loren were the modern equivalent of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer – completely incorrigible.

When I was in first grade, Wilda died in a car accident. She met another driver at a blind intersection, and suddenly Wilda wasn’t there to sit with us in church anymore.

Her life was tragic from top to bottom. And yet, she was the one who first taught me about grace.
During my Protestant childhood, I learned that GRACE was an acronym for God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. I’m still not sure what that means.

And there was the other Protestant definition that blended grace and mercy in such a way that it was impossible to differentiate between the two. “Grace is God’s gift of undeserved mercy.”
So what is grace?

Grace is anything that helps us to live in Christ, grow in holiness and remain on this journey toward sanctification. St. Paul writes in his second letter to the Church at Corinth, “God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

As St. Therese said “Tout est grace” or “All is grace.” If you belong to Jesus Christ, then it’s all good. It’s all grace.

Grace comes the day we bury a husband or care for an ailing mother. Grace is there when we’re raising our children, even if our children are as difficult to raise as Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Grace shows up when we lift our voices and sing our favorite songs - letting the tears fall. Grace finds us when we care for someone else’s children, when we teach them, and when we love them. And grace is there when we meet another car at a blind intersection.

Wilda taught me more about grace by her living and dying than I learned from any sermon, Bible school class, or Sunday school lesson. Grace is God working in us and through us and with us, so that we can live the life of Christ always and everywhere.

It is not a one time shot in the arm.

It is not some clever-sounding acronym that lacks real meaning.

It is found in the nitty-gritty daily living of the faithful Christian who doesn’t give up. It is a gift that flows from baptismal waters and keeps on flowing into the deepest roots of our souls. It shows up when we need it and to the degree that we need it, so that we can weather any storm.
Why must we have a solid understanding of grace? A poor understanding destroys our ability to grasp what Sacred Scripture means when it says that we are saved by grace or that His grace is sufficient or that Mary is full of grace. The definition matters . . . because a faulty definition compromises Truth.

Tout est grace.

It’s all grace. Anything that draws you closer to God and helps you to live out your calling, anything that keeps you close to God . . . that is grace.

Grace: Free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to holiness.

Sanctifying Grace: the grace we receive at baptism. This is a permanent disposition that points us toward God and helps us to live in keeping with God's call.

Actual Grace: God's intervention and support for us in everyday moments of our lives.

Sacramental Grace: Gifts of the Holy Spirit that we receive during reception of the sacraments.

June Catholic By Grace Article

St. Therese, thank you for interceding for the Church!

(From The Catholic Key Blog)

Father Davis, who leads St. Therese Little Flower parish in Kansas City which hosts an Anglican Use community, wrote of the news from the Vatican:

Anglicans and Catholics flocked to visit the relics of Saint Therese of Lisieux as they made a very recent pilgrimage to England. Her relics rested on her 2009 feast day at York Minster, the Cathedral of the Anglican Archbishop of York. When I read about that, I told the people here at St. Therese Little Flower that she was working on something big. In other words, preparations for this Apostolic Constitution have been in process for 170 years, and some of the preparations have been made at levels that are higher than popes.

The Traditional Anglican Communion Bishop of Canada saw the claim and sent an email today to Father Davis with remarkable details of St. Therese’ intercession. Here’s the email:

Dear Father Davis,
Your story about the Anglican Ordinariate and St Therese (which came to me via England this morning) is very interesting. And I can tell you another connexion with her.
I am the Anglican Catholic Bishop of Canada in the TAC. I was present at the Synod of TAC Bishops in Portsmouth England in October 2007 which voted unanimously to ask for full communion, and signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The first full day of the Synod was October 1st, the 'new' date of St Therese's feast, and the actual vote to ask for full communion was taken on October 3rd 'old' date of her feast.
I also accompanied the Primate and Bishop Robert Mercer CR to deliver the Letter to the CDF where we had been directed by the Holy Father. My friend Mother Teresa of the Carmel in Edmonton had given me some holy cards with a piece of cloth touched to her relics. Each of us carried one of these cards, and we asked St Therese's prayers on our venture. We also had similar cards from Poland of the Servant of God John Paul II.
I have continued 'to bother her' about a favourable response to our request, and now thanks to the generosity and love of the Holy Father who has taken a personal interest in us for many years, and the prayers of St Therese, something wonderful has come about.
God bless you,
+Peter Wilkinson, OSG Bishop Ordinary Anglican Catholic Church of Canada TAC

Father Davis has posted the letter at his blog

(For more on this story, go to The Catholic Key Blog)

St. Therese, thank you for interceding for the Church!

Lessons from the Strawberry Bed

My mother told me that I can multiply my strawberry plants many times over if I would be willing to pluck off the blossoms as soon as they appear. I must sacrifice strawberries for a few weeks, perhaps even for a season, but the plants will give themselves over to sending out runners - provided they aren't focused on their own fruit development.

These new runners will shoot off in many directions and become new plants, Mom said. And eventually, we will enjoy even more fruit than we would have with those few original plants.

She was right. I think I have quadrupled my strawbery bed in just a matter of weeks.

Sounds a little like St. Therese. Saint Therese said that she would spend her heaven doing good upon earth, sending down a shower of roses from heaven. This Little Flower was willing to be plucked by Our Lord - so that she could send out runners. So that there would be far more fruit for the Kingdom of God.

Have you petitioned her to send out runners down to you? Are those little blossoms ready to produces good fruit?

Lessons from the Strawberry Bed

The Next Chapter. . .

As wonderful as it was to have my husband enter the Church (after thinking it would never happen), I found myself wondering, "What next?" I realized that most of the writing came out of the disequilibrium that ensues when only one converts. Until his conversion, I had transferred that frustration into writing about the Faith and explaining how I went from "there" to "here." Now that my husband was Catholic, I didn't have anything to write. There was a kind of "done-ness" that followed his conversion. The peace and unity in the home sort of eradicated the energy that had generated so many articles.

I decided to spend some time reading what the writing-saints had to say about the writing life. I’ve discovered an interesting thing about them. For the most part, saints like St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese of Liseux didn’t really want to write. Their superiors told them to do it, and so they did it. For them, writing was never about putting themselves in print. It was only about obedience and fidelity to what God wanted them to do.

So I asked myself, what am I supposed to be doing as an act of obedience and fidelity to God?

I’m realizing there is a definite advantage to the team approach now that my husband is also Catholic. Together, we have come to the humbling conclusion that we have much to learn from the faithful Catholics we know and the sermons Our Lord preached. Most Catholics do not sit at the computer and write articles. They are out there. Feeding the poor. Speaking for the voiceless. Clothing the needy. They are about the business of spreading the Gospel message by what they do, not by what they write. Their lives are the Gospel message.

Through Catholic Charities. St. Vincent de Paul Centers. Catholic Relief Services. Quilting circles. Priests for Life. Centers for young mothers, for the homeless, and for the under-served in our communities. The have-gots sharing with the have-nots. The Catholic faithful ministering to those labeled by society as a fetus or an illegal alien or a welfare case. All those places where religion is made real by action. Where contemplation is rooted in charity and charitable work is the fruit. What comes next? I'm still not sure, but I think it may be saying yes to whatever comes - and whatever remains.

The Next Chapter. . .

The Contemplative

The Contemplative: Teach me to sing, St. Therese.

Let joy flow through me, or suffering.
A wave that cannot be turned back.
Until all is forgotten,
and All is remembered.

See what the tide may bring.
There’s something to keep for another day.
The Spirit, a wind that cannot be contained.
The spirit, with a child’s eager feet.

One that stirs up joy, and deposits it like shells
along the shore. One that runs to find the treasures
before they are carried away.

This is not a joy that says I will not suffer another day.
Nor dances like a hedonist.
Nor shouts at fear and says you will not come again to this place.

She is a child’s soul, a new bride’s soul,
that acts in joy,
embraces peace, and says to suffering,
you must come again for a visit.
I will let you in.
And I will find joy even then.

Because all is grace. . .

-D.E.B. (copyright 2009)

The Contemplative

Littlest Flowers of God

The poem is a mere six lines long. At a glance, it seems like a silly little thing. A poem that might be as easily overlooked as the little flower that inspired the poem.

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

It's Tennyson at is his finest. At least that's what I think. Scholars might not agree. But I believe the poem expresses an important truth - several truths really. There is a God. He created all that we see, and all that we cannot see. We are seeking and sometimes finding.

But it is in the tiniest of life that we see the Hand of God most clearly - if we are willing to look closely. Consider the baby in the womb. This child is a clue. That God exists. That He creates. That there is great wonder and mystery in all life, because all life is God-breathed.

But if we "pluck" that life "out of the crannies" and toss it into a trash can, we will not see. We will not understand. We will not have the epiphany that the poet has had. We will never know the truth of "God and Man" and we might even continue to think that the whole question is "above our pay grade" when really, even poets like Tennyson know that it isn't above their pay grade to ponder the Hand of God in the creation of even a little flower. It is, perhaps, the most important question we ask ourselves. Who made me? When does life begin? Where does it come from? These are the questions we must ask. These are the questions that God will answer. If we really take a close look at that little life.

St. Therese, Little Flower of God, pray for us - and for the most vulnerable among us.

Littlest Flowers of God