GRAZIE! GRATIA!

I found another of those pieces of paper with quotations on it earlier today. The following quotation is from Pope Paul VI and is placed here for mediation:


WE ALL – YOU, ME, EVERYONE – need a solid basis on which to build the edifice of the spiritual life.

The foundation for me comes in two words, two concepts of St. Augustine.

The great mystery of God for me has always been this: that in my MISERIA I still find myself before the MISERICORDIA of God; that I am nothing, wretched; yet God the Father loves me, wants to save me, wants to heal me out of this MISERIA, something I am incapable of doing left to myself.

Then the Father sends His Son, a Son who represents God’s mercy [MISERICORDIA], Who translates it into an act of love towards me, an act of complete self-abandonment to the Father because He must save me too, wretched as I am. But a special grace is needed for this, the grace of conversion. I have to recognize God the Father’s action in His Son in my regard. Once I acknowledge that, God can work in me through His Son: He gives me grace, the grace of Baptism. After the grace of being reborn to God’s life, my life becomes a tension of love, with God drawing me towards Himself. And the loving hand of God draws me onwards towards His mercy, which raises me up when I fall; I have to fix my gaze on Him to be drawn upwards yet again.

Always in all of us, there is this tension between my MISERIA and God’s MISERICORDIA. The whole spiritual life of every one of us lies between those two poles. If I open myself to the action of God and the Holy Spirit and let them do with me what They will, then my tension becomes joyous and I feel within myself a great desire to come to Him and receive His mercy; more than ever I recognize the need to be forgiven, to receive the gift of mercy. Then I feel the need to say grazie, grazie, grazie, thanks, thanks, thanks. And so my whole life becomes a grazie[gratia/thanksgiving/Eucharist] to God because He has saved me, redeemed me, drawn me to Himself in love. It is not anything I have done in my life that saves me, but God’s mercy.