CHAPTER 4: NAMING GRACE

Learning Competencies:
a. Describe the growing trend of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, especially as a lack of awareness of grace
in one’s life;

b. Value the Catholic understanding of sacramental principle, especially as it is lived out and practiced in
liturgy, the seven sacraments and sacramentals; and

c. Investigate ways in which grace can be named in our lives, especially through the arts, through daily
mystagogy, and through narratives.

EXPOSITION

All relationships start from somewhere. Your relationship with your family started when they
committed to love and care for you, even before you were born. Your relationship with your friends may
have started with a particular event or an introduction that forged a bond that has since then endured
the test of time. For every relationship, with family, friends, or loved ones, there is always a beginning.
With such a beginning comes an underlying promise, sometimes not even said out loud. It is a promise to
love and cherish one another.

In the relationship with God, the encounter begins with God’s self-gift of Himself and His divine
will in grace. Grace is the dynamic outreach of God to humanity. However, grace has been a highly
misunderstood reality amongst Catholics, especially in the Philippines. This is most evident in the
misconceptions regarding grace within the practice of the Eucharist:

God’s grace is reduced to special favors or magic spells invoked by the believer for some kind of
benefit. Grace is not anymore linked with relationship, but reduced to commodity. The worst aspect of
this misconception is the apparent absence of God when deemed unnecessary, which is at the heart of
the issue of nominal Catholicism in the Philippines. Slowly, the nation is becoming Catholic by name, but
not by relationship with God. Grace is relationship. Grace is dynamism. And if we are to start anywhere,
we must start by recovering this notion of action, movement and relationality in our understanding of
grace.

MORALISTIC THERAPEUTIC DEISM

One of the problems in the Philippines is an impoverished notion of grace. People do not
understand how God reaches out to us, and is dynamically present in our lives. Instead, God is rendered
as static and distant. And the best way to understand this trend is through young people. There is “no
greater barometer for trends” of the prevailing culture than the youth.2 What young people say about
grace can be very telling about the general mindset regarding grace.

Sociologist Christian Smith and his team began research in 1999 in order to survey and interview
young people in American. This is a project known as the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). The
results of this study were published in a book entitled Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of
American Teenagers.3 In this study, Smith discovered a common religious perspective that characterized
young people’s understanding of God. Smith called this Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), which can
be summarized in the following key notions:4

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on Earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most
world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve
a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

Smith realized that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism has become the widespread worldview, not just
for Christians, but across religious lines. In summary: “Adolescent religiosity is moralistic because religion
is meant to provide a moral framework. It is therapeutic because religion is meant to provide an inward
sense of fulfillment. And it is deistic because, other than as provider of moral guidelines and emotional
stability, God is basically absent.”5

Why has this worldview become so prevalent? Smith argues that young people have “turned from
traditional sources of moral authority and guidance to “a new authoritative class of professional and
popular psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other therapeutic counsellors, authors, talk show
hosts, and advice givers.”6 This resulted into misguided understanding about some foundational aspects
regarding faith, especially amongst Christians. “Christianity is at least degenerating into a pathetic view of
itself, or significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and replaced by a quite different religious
faith.”7 Theologian Michael D. Langford gives the following observation:
Wider cultural and philosophical movements—rationalism, progressivism, romanticism,
individualism, consumerism— have influenced American religiosity in such a way that religious
observation has not decreased, but rather has undergone a transformation toward increasing
moralism, experientialism, and self determination. There have been many different suggestions
as to the mechanics of this transformation. Perhaps the increasing diversity of beliefs in our
culture have for so long rubbed up against each other that they have smoothed the edges of
 religious distinctives into a generalized set of common denominators. Perhaps the increasing
secularity in our culture has transformed transcendent religions into a common “civic religion”
that endorses beliefs best suited for the maintenance of our society. 8

First, as Christians grapple with the difficulties of living in a pluralistic society, we

(especially in nonevangelical traditions) have been formed to avoid arguing with others, in the
name of being nice and this meshes well with both SBNR and MTD sensibilities. We have created
a world in which SBNR and MTD make sense. That is to say, Christians are at least complicit in, if
not outright responsible for, the growing phenomenon of being “spiritual but not religious.”
Second, in a world where many people (Christian and non-Christian alike) see at least some
Christian viewpoints as inherently exclusionary and biased, it is all too easy for Christian formation
to take one of two paths. The first is to be defensive about Christian teaching such that it
continues to alienate those who have difficulty with traditional Christianity in the first place. The
second is to maintain a sense that Christian belief does not really matter but, hey, come to church
anyway!9

This is far from being consonant and consistent with the Catholic approach to other world
religions.10 In fact, no true interreligious dialogue can exist unless we stand our ground regarding the
essentials of our faith. Sandra Schneiders explains that: “only a person deeply immersed in and faithful to
her or his own tradition can make a real contribution to this dialogue. Inter-religious dialogue is not
promoted by the well-meaning civility of vague non-denominationalism or some attempt at a least
common denominator faith or a rootless practice composed of unrelated elements from a variety of
traditions.”11

In summary, although the studies done in the United States, much of the descriptions regarding
the MTD worldview sounds strikingly similar to what is being encountered in the Philippines as well, which
has resulted in deficiencies in understanding God and grace. A study by Filipino sociologist Jayeel Cornelio
confirms these suspicions.12 Interviewing various young people, Cornelio realized that these youth view
God as a personal God. In one interview, one youth referred to herself as being daughter of God, “being
loved, being taken care of, being guided.”13 However, “while God is referred to in relational terms, it is
always personal, as in belonging-to-the-person: ‘my father,’ ‘my brother,’ and ‘my friend.’”14 Although
initially relational, it seems more fitting to say that for these people, God has become possession, as if
God were private property. This is a definite manifestation of the static understanding of MTD regarding
God as being called upon when there are problems, but the rest of the time, he is distant and absent.
Cornelio defines this spirituality as the “reflexive spirituality”:
There are two simultaneous processes to their reflexive or what may also be considered
self-directed and reinterpreting spirituality. It is first a spirituality that is directed towards the self,
as emphasised by personally experiencing God which lends itself to the sense of authenticity (or
sincerity) they gain about being Catholic. This is why they lament the religious indifference of their
peers, churched and otherwise. But it is also a spirituality directed from the self. Being Catholic,
in other words, is practical, as seen in their principle that right living is more important than right
believing.15

This reflexive spirituality is impoverished in its understanding of both the personal and social
realities of faith. At the same time, it contains the wings of spirituality, but has very shallow roots to cling
on. Ultimately, the end result is a deficient understanding of how God relates and reaches out to people,
as God’s outreach is reduced to a kind of 24-hour convenience store of grace—available when needed,
ignored the rest of the time.

Thus, where do we begin to encounter and engage Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the situation of
“spiritual but not religious,” and even other world religions in a vastly pluralistic society? We must begin
firmly rooted in our Catholic faith, and in what makes us truly Catholic. This begins with a recognition of
the presence of God as active in our lives and in our world. It begins with the experience of grace, and the
authentically Catholic principle of sacramentality.

THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE

Nothing is more significant to what makes us Catholic than the sacramental principle. Noted
expert in religious education Thomas Groome explains that:
The sacramental principle means that God is present to humankind and we respond to
God’s grace through the ordinary and everyday of life in the world. In other words, God’s Spirit
and humankind work together through nature and creation, through culture and society, through
our minds and bodies, hearts and souls, through our labors and efforts, creativity and
generativity, in the depth of our own being and in community with others, through the events
and experiences that come our way, through what we are doing and what is ‘going on’ around
us, through everything and anything of life. Life in the world is sacramental—the medium of God’s
outreach and of human response.16

The world, and everything in created reality, has the opportunity to become a sign of God’s
presence in our lives. Nature reveals the creative power of God and His sustaining love that breathes life
into the plants and animals around us. Our community, our family, our friends and people around us can
also be signs of grace, through their love and care for us. God even reaches us in the experiences of
suffering and evil that bear a particular potential to reveal God’s presence when God is experienced as a
source of endurance and hope, in sharp contrast to the evil being experienced.

At the same time, God is not seen as the distant God of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism within this
understanding of the sacramental principle. God actively works and participates in life, within the very
reality and history of human beings. As Pope Saint John Paul II expressed: “History therefore becomes the
arena where we see what God does for humanity. God comes to us in the things we know best and can
verify most easily, the things of our everyday life, apart from which we cannot understand ourselves.”17

“Grace is here. It is present wherever we are. It can always indeed be seen by the eye of faith and
be expressed by the word of the message.”18

AUGUSTINE AND GRACE

The struggle to find God present in our lives is not new. Throughout human history, men and
women of the Church have tried to grapple with this complex mystery of grace. In particular, the Doctors
of the Church, some of the earliest theologians of our faith, have contributed greatly to this effort. One
of the Doctors of the Church is Saint Augustine, one of the four great Latin Doctors, who strove to provide
solid foundations for the Church to direct its theological discourse on grace. Augustine was so influential
on the study of grace that he is called the Doctor gratiae, the Doctor of Grace.
 Augustine drew from his own wrestling with the presence of God as a source for his articulation
of the reality of grace:
Augustine of Hippo famously explains that after years of restless searching for truth, he
came to the realization that while he had been desperately seeking God under his own strength,
God had been on the move, seeking him without ceasing, reaching out to him, drawing him to
God. He exclaims: “Late have I loved you! Lo, you were within but I outside, seeking for you there.
. . . You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance.” Augustine found that God was a God who never gives up, who
searches out the lost without counting the cost, doing whatever it takes to establish relationship,
stirring up human desire for a life with God.19

For Augustine, God moves, and God acts. There is a dynamic quality to grace, contrary to the static
understanding that has plagued the Catholic Church since its inception. Especially in the Philippines, grace
has often been reduced to some kind of currency or possession that is acquired through the prayer life,
especially through the seven sacraments. This very notion of static grace is one Augustine made sure to
critically respond to in his various reflections on grace:
Augustine’s teaching on grace and salvation has a dynamic quality that wells up from its
deep roots in the relational nature of the living God. For Augustine, grace acts. God in love springs
into action, creating the world, making a covenant with Israel that will reach to all the world in
Christ. God does not wait in the wings for an invitation or for a problem to resolve. Instead, God
is ever present in the world, seeking relationship with humanity. 20

This notion of God’s dynamism is a direct critique of the very foundations of beliefs blind to grace,
such as those of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. For the Moralistic Therapeutic Deist, God is a distant God
that does not intervene in human life, unless called upon to solve a problem. However, Augustine reminds
us that “God’s outreach to humanity reaches its pinnacle in the incarnation in which God took radical
action with the full embrace of human life.”21 God is not a God of inaction, and neither is He some kind of
possession. Instead, He is the God who loved humanity and this world to the point of taking on this world
in its fullness. “God lives humanly in Christ, and is united to every human being, even those who still do
not know God explicitly, in such a way that the Word lifts our human state, taking it on in his person.” 22
This is not a distant God. Instead, this is a God of active and dynamic love, present in our lives—past,
present and future.

THE LITURGY, SCARAMENTS AND SACRAMENTALS

Unbelief is often grounded on the argument that God is not present within people’s lives.
Therefore, within the Catholic tradition, there is a clear attempt at showcasing that God indeed graces
our lives with His presence, and is involved in our context, situation and history. One of the ways in which
God communicates and reaches out to us is through a sacrament. Sacraments are “sacred signs/symbols
which signify some spiritual effect which is realized through the action of the Church.”23 Some examples
of sacraments within our Catholic tradition are the seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation or
Chrismation, Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. The seven
sacraments are “defined as ‘actions of Christ and of the Church’ which unite us to Christ by the power of
the Holy Spirit, and incorporate us into his Body, the Church.”24 Mary Catherine Hilkert, professor of
systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame, explains that the mystery of grace can be
encountered fully through the liturgy and the sacraments:
 Because human beings are essentially embodied and social, however, grace as the
spiritual mystery at the heart of reality has to be manifested in concrete, historical and visible
ways. God’s presence is mediated in and through creation and human history, but that mystery
remains hidden and untapped unless it is brought to word. The proclamation of the word and the
celebration of the sacraments (Augustine’s “visible words”) bring the depth dimension of reality—
grace—to recognition and thus effective power.25

Thus, the liturgy and the sacraments are encounters with the word that brings to life the grace
that can be found within our lives and our reality. The liturgical celebrations nourish us and keeps our
eyes open to the grace that permeates our daily living. There is, therefore, a very intimate relationship
between the explicit word of the gospel—encountered in liturgy— and the word of grace spoken in history
and experience.

However, sacraments can be found all around us, as other people and created reality can become
signs of God’s grace in our lives. Besides the seven sacraments, the Church, over the centuries has
instituted “sacramentals” as helpful avenues for grace:
the People of God, the Church, over the centuries has instituted―sacramentals (cf. CCC
1667-73). They are objects, actions, practices, places, and the like, that help us become aware of
Christ’s grace-filled presence around us or liberate from the presence of the Evil One (exorcism).
They help us receive the sacraments with greater fruit, and “render holy various occasions in life”
(SC 60). Like the sacraments, they are sacred signs/symbols which signify some spiritual effect
which is realized through the action of the Church. But they differ from the seven sacraments in
that they are not “instituted by Christ” as described above, but by the Church, which uses them
to sanctify everyday life. They do not directly modify our grace-relationship with Christ, but rather
arouse us to acts of virtue and piety which strengthen God’s grace-filled presence within and
among us.26

The Second Vatican Council affirms this role that sacramentals play in the life of the Church:
“These are sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments: they signify effects, particularly of
a spiritual kind, which are obtained through the Church’s intercession. By them men are disposed to
receive the chief effect of the sacraments, and various occasions in life are rendered holy.”27

In disposing us toward more fruitful celebration of the sacraments, sacramentals continue the
work of the sacraments and thus can be viewed as extending or prolonging the seven sacraments:
Sacramentals are very popular among Filipinos, who eagerly make use of blessings
(homes, cars, buildings), actions (kneeling, bowing, making the Sign of the Cross), words (grace
before and after meals, indulgenced novena prayers, pious invocations, litanies), objects (ashes,
palms, candles, crucifixes, rosaries, scapulars, statues), places (churches, shrines), and time
liturgical seasons (cf. Advent, Lent, Holy Week). Filipinos tend naturally to seek concrete sensible
expression of their Faith and religious experience.28

The liturgy, the seven sacraments and sacramentals allow us to recognize that God is present to
humankind. It also opens for us the possibility to respond to God’s grace through the ordinary and
everyday realities of our life in this world. God’s Spirit and human beings work together through nature
and creation, through culture, through our works, efforts, and experiences. In other words, what we are
doing and what is “going on” around us, has a potential to be a sacrament. The world, and everything in
created reality, has the opportunity to become a sign of God’s presence in our lives. God even reaches us
in the experiences of suffering and evil that bear a particular potential to reveal God’s presence when God
is experienced as a source of endurance and hope, in sharp contrast to the evil being experienced.29 In
our joys and sorrows, God can be found, and we are reminded of this constantly in the liturgical
experience.

NAMING GRACE IN OUR LIVES

Recognizing God in our lives is the challenge given to us as the Church. This challenge can be
referred to as “naming the grace” in our lives. This final section of the lesson gives suggestions for honing
the practice of “naming grace” in order to form a sacramental awareness and imagination, as believers
able to recognize the presence of God in us and among us.

A. RECOGNIZING THE SACRED IN THE ARTS

The problem with the inability to recognize grace is our lives draws roots from the supposed
“disenchantment of the world” experience by modern peoples.30 This “disenchantment” is characteristic
of a world that has since moved toward a more and more modernized, bureaucratic and secularized
Western society.

In the “disenchanted world,” empirical and scientific understanding is more highly valued than
belief, where the mythic vision and imagination of faith has been replaced by the highly pragmatic and
outcome driven goals of ideologies such as rationalism.

Therefore, the first order of business is a reclamation of enchantment with the world, and its
ability to become avenue for grace for all peoples. One suggestion can be taken from David Brown, an
Anglican priest and British theologian. Brown wrote a book entitled God and the Enchantment of Place:
Reclaiming Human Experience, where he argues that “God can come sacramentally close to his world and
vouchsafe experiences of himself through the material.”31

One way to name grace in our lives is through an engagement of the arts:
Because the arts are capable of engaging one’s emotions and stimulating religious
experience, they may be useful in helping students to encounter God and to understand the Bible
at a deeper, more personal level. The arts are not only a fascinating lure into the spiritual realm
of human existence but also an evocative language expressing universal human experiences. 32

Whether Christian or secular art, an engagement of these various media, where we are drawn to
goodness and truth through beauty, can pave the way for experiencing the divine in some special manner.
Through the beauty of art, God the most beautiful can be encounter/ French philosopher and mystic
Simone Weil describes beauty as “the attribute of God under which we see him.”33 In another work, Weil
describes encountering Christ’s “tender smile for us coming through matter.”34 Here she describes how
the contact of the artist encounters the beauty of the world as being a sacrament.35 Augustine mentions
a similar experience: “My questioning was my attentive spirit, and their reply was beauty.”36

For instance, the creative imagination can be found present in the experience of music. Music can
become a sacramental way in which God reaches out to us, and in a similar manner, a way for us to reach
back to God. We listen to music during times of joy and celebration. However, music is just as powerful in
times of difficulty, in times when we feel grace is nowhere to be found.
 Saint Augustine was at first quite hesitant to acknowledge the power of music within religious
experience, and even refused to sing in Church. At some point however, he will recognize this power
drawing from his own experiences. As Augustine mention in his Confessions: “the tears flowed from me
when I heard your hymns and canticles, for the sweet singing of your Church moved me deeply. The music
surged in my ears, truth seeped into my heart, and my feelings of devotion overflowed, so that the tears
streamed down. But they were tears of gladness.”37

Augustine had difficulty accepting music, because he had issues grappling with his own emotions.
However, when he was able to recognize the power of music to help integrate these emotions, Augustine
allowed himself to be overcome by music, and through music, to be overcome by an encounter with God:
Despite the almost overwhelming need to cry, Augustine again mentions his restraint
and discipline, not once shedding a tear during his mother’s funeral procession, prayers and
burial. Later that evening, while lying in bed, he recalls the hymn written by Ambrose; only then,
when recalling the verse and hymn (and responding emotionally to the melody), does he finally
give in and cry—confessing he may still be ‘guilty of too much worldly affection’. On the night of
his mother’s death, Augustine again allows himself to weep. The repeated experiences of
mourning and song will force him to begin writing De Musica, a treatise which culminates, in Book
6, with the faculty of judgement—or what he calls ‘estimate’— reason overcoming emotions: ‘to
enjoy with the senses is not the same as to estimate by reason.’ 38

Another good example is in the beauty of Church architecture. “Buildings can and do
communicate a mediated divine presence.” Who among us has not been inspired by the beauty of San
Agustin Church in Intramuros, or of the grandeur of Manila Cathedral? The Philippines is rich with many
beautiful Churches that act as monolithic icons of the immensity of the beautiful God. From the likes of
Paoay Church in Ilocos to the North, or the San Pedro Cathedral in Davao to the South, the Philippines rich
history of Catholicism remains preserved in its Church architecture, one that signifies and preserves a
Filipino history of encountering God’s grace.

Not all experiences with the arts will lead us to the sacred. The sacramental principle reminds us
that all things bear the potential for the divine, but depending on the situation and the piece of art we are
encountering, encounter with God may not come as easily or readily. However, openness and a prayerful
disposition can help make this encounter easier. A prayerful disposition can be honed through daily acts
of prayer. The next section gives a suggestion for training this disposition through daily mystagogy.

B. DAILY MYSTAGOGY

The capacity of naming grace is a honed practice that must be done habitually in order to
strengthen it within the believer. As such, particular ways of imbibing this habit will be vital to reclaiming
an authentic understanding of grace. One way this can be done is through “the mystagogy of daily life.”40
Mystagogy means learning about the mysteries of the faith, pondering such mysteries such as the liturgy,
the sacraments, and most importantly, the mystery of grace. A daily practice of learning about this
mystery of grace will hone the naming of such grace in our lives. The practice of daily mystagogy
supplements the experience of sacramental mystagogy in the liturgy:
The experience of daily mystagogy can itself become an experience of grace in learning
to believe that God will speak and reflect with us. Daily mystagogy and sacramental mystagogy
can be mutually nourishing as becoming more deeply attuned to God’s presence in moments
 throughout the day can lead to deeper awareness of grace in the sacraments, and the sacraments
likewise make us more attentive to our encounter of God in all our life. 41

One of the best ways to practice daily mystagogy is through daily interiority. Interiority is a key
feature in Augustinian spirituality. “Do not go outside,” Augustine says, but “return to within yourself;
truth dwells in the inner man; and if you find that your nature is changeable, transcend yourself. But
remember, when you transcend yourself, you are transcending a soul that reasons. Reach, therefore, to
where the light of reason is lit.”42 This interiority is highlighted once more in a longer exposition by Pope
John Paul II in his apostolic letter on the occasion of the 16th centenary of the conversion of Augustine:
Man’s interiority, where the inexhaustible riches of truth and love are stored, is “a great
abyss,” which St. Augustine never ceases to investigate with unfailing wonder. Here we must add
that, for one who reflects on himself and on history, the human person appears as a great
problem—as Augustine says, a “great question.” Too many enigmas surround him: the enigma
of death, of the profound division that he suffers in himself, of the incurable imbalance between
what he is and what he desires. 43

Saint Augustine held a view of the world and reality that put grace at the forefront of Christian
life. “Augustine’s grace-aware view of the world gave a mystagogical nature to much of his work. In
preaching, he gave deep attention to the transforming effect of the sacraments, the formative nature of
ritual gestures and words, and the sacramental ‘overflow’ into the life of Christians.”44 Augustine was also
very much attentive to various signs of grace in life: “But the sky and the earth too, and everything in
them— all these things around me are telling me that I should love you.”45 For Augustine, the world, and
consequently life in it, become expressions and proclamations of God, and a call to respond to that God
in faith.

C. EXPERIENCING GOD THROUGH NARRATIVE

Another important resource for naming grace in our lives is by engaging narrative.46 “Biblical
stories, historical accounts, contemporary examples, and fictional tales can all form the sacramental
awareness.”47
Narratives contribute substantially to communicating and expressing what one’s faith means.
People tell stories to understand the world they inhabit and to show themselves and others ways
of navigating in that world. Creeds tend to be abstractions—they have a timeless quality. Stories,
on the other hand, are always set in particular (sometimes paradigmatic or archetypal) times and
places.48

The temporality and spatiality of narrative allows for a greater awareness of God’s presence in
actual human history and the world. Grace is not some distant reality. Rather, God dwells in the particular,
meeting people wherever they are. God’s gratuitous self-gift came to a high point within the
transcendental narrative of our world when God entered into human history, taking on humanity in its
entirety through the Incarnation. Narrative can thus become axis towards an awareness of grace within
human living.

And this is exactly what believers need within the context of our world today. People are losing
sight of a greater narrative at work in their lives. They do not see themselves as part of a story greater
than themselves. This loss of collective, transcendental narrative has led many people to a “collective
depression.”49
 As such, many people have forgotten a central feature of the faith—the Christian story. This story
is at the core of the faith, from which our creedal truths emerge. The story comes first, and the creed
follows:
Three events dominated the Christian story: God’s creating act, His redeeming act in
Jesus Christ, and His sanctifying presence in all in the Holy Spirit. From these narrative elements
grew the Trinitarian pattern of the classic Creeds. First the Father as Creator, then the Son, who
became man, died and rose from the dead for our redemption, and third, the Holy Spirit uniting
us in Christ’s Church. But this Trinity is seen through a Christocentric focus, for it is through, with,
and in Christ that we learn and experience the Father and Holy Spirit. 50

By drawing meaning from various narratives, especially the narratives found in our sacred text,
we can “reclaim a master narrative that situates the present life in the ongoing story of God’s grace and
human history.”51 By honing the narrative awareness, we grow in awareness of the transcendental
Christian story that directs the very life of faith. Thus, naming grace through narrative is not just about
“retelling the story of the past, no matter how creatively. The story continues—as our story.”52

SUMMARY

The following is a reflection by theologian Karl Rahner on the human being’s search and
movement toward meaning, and God’s reaching out to humans in that search, in the form of grace, and
it acts as a good synthesis for this lesson on grace:
Movement is one of the most everyday things in our daily round. We only think about it
when we can’t move any more, when we’re shut in or paralyzed. Then we suddenly experience
being able to move as a grace and a miracle. We’re not plants, tied down to just one setting
determined for us; we search out our setting for ourselves, we change it, we make a choice—to
move. And as we change, we experience ourselves as beings who change ourselves, as searchers,
as those who are still on the way. We recognize that we want to move toward a goal, and that
we don’t want to wander into a mere vacuum. When we are moving toward something difficult
and unavoidable, we still experience ourselves as free, even if we can only move toward accepting
it as something imposed.

These few, quite tiny indications are enough to show how we are constantly interpreting
our whole life in terms of the utterly basic experience of everyday movement. We move, and this
simple physiological movement is already enough to say that we have here no abiding city, that
we are on the way, that our real arrival is still ahead of us, that we are still seeking the goal, that
we are really pilgrims, wanderers between two worlds, humanity in transition, moved and being
moved, steering a movement already imposed on us, and also discovering as we plan our moves,
that we don’t always end up where we planned to.

We talk about a way of life, and the first description of Christians was as “those who belonged to
the way” (Acts 9:2). When Scripture tells us that we are not to be hearers of the words but also
doers of the word, it is thereby also saying that we don’t just live in the Spirit, but should move in
the Spirit. We talk about the course of events, from the good outcome of an undertaking, about
the approach to understanding, of how a deceitful person goes behind one’s back, of something
happening as an occurrence (from the Latin for “runs across”), of a change as a transition, of the
end as a passing away. A king ascends to a throne; our life is a pilgrimage; history moves forward;
something we can understand we call accessible; a decision can appear as a step. Both in the
sacred and secular spheres, great celebrations are marked by processions and parades. In the
 simplest act of movement—for acts presupposed knowledge and freedom—what it is to be
human is in fact fully present, and we are faced with our own existence. A Christian’s faith reveals
what the goal of this existence is and promises that it is coming. We exist as an unending
movement, conscious of itself and its unfinishedness, a movement that searches, and that
believes it finds, because (and again we cannot speak otherwise) God’s own self comes in the
descent and the return of the Lord, who is our future to come. We move; we cannot but be
seeking. But the Real and the Ultimate is coming to us, and seeking us out—obviously only as we
are moving, as we are coming-toward. And when the times comes that we have found—found
because we have been found—we will discover that our very coming-toward was already being
carried (this is what we call grace) by the power of the movement that is coming upon us, by
God’s movement toward us.53

References:
1 Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Catechism for Filipino Catholics, Special Subsidized Edition for Filipino
Catechists (Manila: Episcopal Commission for Catechesis and Catholic Education, 2005), paras. 1672–1673. Hereafter refer to as
CFC with paragraph number.
2 Christian Smith, as cited in Kimberly Baker, “Proclaiming a Dynamic Understanding of Grace: The Spiritual Foundation for

Sacramental and Liturgical Catechesis,” Worship 89, no. 6 (November 2015): 509.
3 See Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers

(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005), 118–71.

4 Smith and Denton, 162–63.
5 Michael D. Langford, “Spirit-Driven Discipleship: A Pneumatology of Youth Ministry,” Theology Today 71, no. 3 (October 2014):

325.
6 Smith and Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, 173.
7 Smith and Denton, 56–57.
8 Langford, “Spirit-Driven Discipleship A Pneumatology of Youth Ministry,” 325.
9 Jana Marguerite Bennett, “What Faith Formation Means in the Age of ‘Nones,’” Liturgy 30, no. 3 (July 2015): 50.
10 A detailed treatment of an authentic approach to the plurality of religions can be found in the next chapter.
11 Sandra M. Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality: A Contemporary Conundrum,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 3,

no. 2 (2003): 179.

12 See Jayeel Serrano Cornelio, “Religious Identity and the Isolated Generation: What Being Catholic Means to Religiously

Involved Filipino Students Today” (National University of Singapore, 2011).

13 Cornelio, 143–44.
14 Cornelio, 144.
15 Cornelio, 156.
16 Thomas Groome, “What Makes Us Catholic: The Sacramental Principle,” C21 Resources, no. 17 (Spring 2012): 4.
17 Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998), para. 12.
18 Karl Rahner, “Priest and Poet,” in Theological Investigations, trans. Karl-H. Kruger and Boniface Kruger, vol. 3 (Baltimore, MD:

Helicon Press, 1967), 313.

19 Baker, “Proclaiming a Dynamic Understanding of Grace: The Spiritual Foundation for Sacramental and Liturgical Catechesis,”

508.
20 Baker, 512.
21 Baker, 514.
22 Emmanuel da Silva e Araújo, “Ignatian Spirituality as a Spirituality of Incarnation,” The Way 47, no. 1/2 (January 2008): 69.
23 CFC 1532.
24 CFC 1517.
25 Catherine Hilkert, Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination (New York, NY: Continuum, 1997), 47.
26 CFC 1532.
27 Pope Paul VI, Sacrosanctum Concilium (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1963), para. 60.
28 CFC 1534.
29 See Kathleen Anne McManus, Unbroken Communion: The Place and Meaning of Suffering in the Theology of Edward

Schillebeeckx (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

30 Max Weber was a German sociologist and philosopher who popularized the phrase “disenchantment of the world,” which he
borrowed from Friedrich Schiller. See Richard Jenkins, “Disenchantment, Enchantment and Re-Enchantment: Max Weber at the
Millennium,” Max Weber Studies 1, no. 1 (November 2000): 11–32.
31 David Brown, God and the Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 88.
32 Mary Karita Ivancic, “Imagining Faith: The Biblical Imagination in Theory and Practice,” Theological Education 41, no. 2 (2006):

133–34.
33 Simone Weil, On Science, Necessity and the Love of God, trans. Richard Rees (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 129.
34 Simone Weil, Waiting on God, trans. Emma Crauford (London: Fontana, 1959), 120.
35 Cf. Weil, 124.
36 Augustine, Confessions 10.6.9 as cited Allan D. Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” in Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40, ed. Allan D.

Fitzgerald, vol. 3, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century 20 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2009), 19.
37 Augustine, Confessions 9.4.14 as cited in Giosuè Ghisalberti, “Listening to Hymns and Tears of Mourning in Augustine’s

Confessions, Book 9,” Early Music 43, no. 2 (2015): 252.

38 Ghisalberti, 253.
40 Cf. Kathleen Hughes, Becoming the Sign: Sacramental Living in a Post-Conciliar Church (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 2003),

91–92.
41Baker, “Proclaiming a Dynamic Understanding of Grace: The Spiritual Foundation for Sacramental and Liturgical Catechesis,”

523.
42Augustine, De vera religione, 39.72.
43Pope John Paul II, Augustinum Hipponensem (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1986), sec. 2.2.
44Baker, “Proclaiming a Dynamic Understanding of Grace: The Spiritual Foundation for Sacramental and Liturgical Catechesis,”

522.
45Augustine, Confessions 10.6.8.
46 This final practice of naming grace will be the focus of the final unit of this book.
47 Baker, “Proclaiming a Dynamic Understanding of Grace: The Spiritual Foundation for Sacramental and Liturgical Catechesis,”

523.
48 Terrence W. Tilley, Faith: What It Is and What It Isn’t (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010), 75.
49 See Oliver Bennett, Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University

Press, 2001).
50 CFC 226.
51 Baker, “Proclaiming a Dynamic Understanding of Grace: The Spiritual Foundation for Sacramental and Liturgical Catechesis,”

524.
52 Hilkert, Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination, 56.
53 Karl Rahner, Spiritual Writings, ed. Philip Endean, Modern Spiritual Masters Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 53–55.