Seasons of grace
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Isaiah 55:10-11; Psalm 65, R. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest.; Romans 8:18-23; Gospel – Matthew 13:1-9
Years ago, in my mid-life years, I came across a line from Robert Johnson’s “The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden.” He wrote that grace is always available, but we must ask for it to have an effect in our lives. This summarizes the points I invite you to reflect on from this Sunday’s Gospel, the Parable of the Sower or the Parable of the Soils.
Grace given freely and in abundance
God’s word and God’s grace are always available to us. The seed that the sower sows is given freely and in abundance. That said, God does not choose to whom he showers his grace. This is the first reality I invite you to reflect on. Grace is all around us and is always ours for the taking, so to speak.
The second point for your reflection is how we look at grace in our lives. Our perspective of grace reveals the state of our inner life—our spiritual health. Our spiritual life naturally seeks grace and welcomes grace. Here, we distinguish between two basic types or states of spiritual life.
The path in the parable is one state of spiritual life that shuts out grace. The other type welcomes grace, but with differing levels or states that determine the fruits of grace from our spiritual life.
The third point is our freedom to choose how we are to nurture and develop our spiritual life. Even more fundamental is to choose to nurture or not to nurture. If we choose to nurture, there is the choice of the depth or quality of our spiritual life. But first we must choose to nurture.
Ours for the asking
Let me go back to where I started this reflection. Johnson’s take on grace is always available and ours for the asking.
I read the book as I was going through mid-life. It was in the final stages of my journey through this part of our development as a person—the part that makes us assess the first half of our life and make choices for the second half, putting it simply.
Fr. Benny Calpotura, S.J. put it this way: Now you need to choose whether you will enter the core of our relationship with Jesus or stay in the periphery. This presupposes we have a relationship with Jesus as the fundamental choice we made. The core and periphery choice is the quality of our spiritual life.
It was interesting how Fr. Benny described how several people chose to stay in the periphery—going through examples of people familiar to both of us. Then he described the people who chose to enter the core.
Choices that entail risks and sacrifices
It dawned on me then, 20-plus years ago, that it meant entering the mystery of the Cross. I chose to enter the core. Life has not been the same since.
From then on, looking back now, I made choices that required a lot of risk-taking and sacrifice.
My first love and comfort zone was being a teacher. I saw it as central to my mission, “to help the youth of the high school to discover Christ in their life.” (Fr. Frank Reily, S.J.) Knowing the difficulty and pain of having minimal adult guidance, much less affection, I chose to be an adult presence in the life of my students struggling with pain, uncertainty, and brokenness.
This early choice helped in my healing, and it made me choose to develop a spiritual life and begin to realize and understand the presence of grace. I tried to share this with my students.
Later, I chose to leave this love of my life for a greater love. I was asked to lead the capital fund campaign of the university. I asked for the Christmas break to pray over it. I came back from the holidays and said “yes.” And I did because I saw that the quality of Jesuit or Ignatian education we can give to future generations of youth who will choose our school will depend on the resources we can mobilize.
After my term of five years in fundraising, I made an even more difficult choice: to leave the Ateneo—my home for 40 years by then—and, due to circumstances of our Philippine Province priorities, to apply for dismissal as a Jesuit.
The grace that saw me through this period, a discernment of over two years—capped by Fr. Benny telling me, “God wants you to do this. Go!”—was the beginning of my understanding that spiritual life was always grounded in mission and mission was not simply what God wants me to do, but how he wants me to do it.
Grace is always available
Being a Jesuit and being with Jesuits were some of the happiest years of my life. Seasons of grace. It shaped me a lot as to who I am now, my priesthood, and my spiritual life. Life after being a Jesuit for 22 years, and growing up with Jesuits for 19 years, carried with it graces beyond my wildest dreams. But this part may be for another reflection.
The journey affirmed Johnson’s counsel: Grace is always available, but we must ask for it to make a difference in our lives. And the journey also taught me that everything is grace.
P.S. Later on, post-Jesuit life, I realized the core of my relationship with Jesus was not just the Cross, but the Cross and Resurrection.
