CONSISTENCY IN GRACE
FEAST OF SAINT LUKE, EVANGELIST
2 Tim 4:10-17; Ps 145:10-13,17-18;
Lk 10:1-9
Remaining Consistent in
Grace
We have described God’s
gift of graces as coming in a cycle of prevenient, actual, and thanksgiving
graces. The grace of God does not come in cycles alone, but also in a
consistent and frequent manner. Because the grace of God is His presence and
holy will, given to us, it flows like a stream into us, to sustain our
relationship and interaction with Him. Picturing the grace of God as a stream
is consistent with Scripture. We see the consistency of God’s grace presented
as a stream of water flowing from the divine fountain both in the Old and New
Testaments. Our Lord himself used the image to refer to the Holy Spirit within
the believers in the Gospel of John, chapter 8. We hardly experience this
consistency of grace in our lives. Our inability to experience the consistency
of grace is not from God, but from ourselves. The problem is our failure to
consistently fulfil the requirement to receive the prevenient, actual, and
thanksgiving graces. Our attention does not flow consistently to God, but
intermittently. Grace cannot flow into us when we remove our attention from
God. Our attention is the spiritual channel through which we receive the inflow
of spiritual reality. Faith must also reinforce the quality of the attention we
channel to God, for it is impossible to please God without faith. If we
consistently attend to God in faith, then we will live a prayerful life and be
open to the inflow of grace.
The inconsistency in our
faith and attention to God is what Paul bewailed in the second letter he wrote
to Timothy. “Demas has deserted me for love of this life and gone to
Thessalonika, Crescens has gone to Galatia and Titus to Dalmatia; only Luke is
with me.” As Saint Paul rightly mentioned, the love of this life and attachment
to creatures draw us away from God and divert our attention from God. Our
remaining consistent with God requires living and developing our interior or
spiritual life. God is the Supreme Spirit, and to be attentive to Him means
being aware or attentive at the highest part of our being. Because deep calls
to deep, we cannot properly and consistently attend to God without our
spiritual attention. Based on the consistency of God’s grace to us, our prayer
life grows when we intensify our attention on God and make it consistent. We
can never develop a solid spirituality without a heightened attention on God
and His word, which develops consistent prayer. Both the Rosary and constant meditation
on the word of God help in this regard. These spiritual exercises foster a
vigilant spirit in us. They help us to do everything in the presence of the
Holy Spirit and with the help of his inspiration. Discontentment with our lot
in life and a desire for material gain vitiate our spiritual attention. We
notice this in the life of Alexander the coppersmith, who caused harm to Paul.
“Alexander the coppersmith has done me a lot of harm; the Lord will repay him
for what he has done. Be on your guard against him yourself, because he has
been bitterly contesting everything that we say.” His bitterness points to his
discontentment.
By remaining with the Son of Man, the Incarnate Word of God, for three years, the apostles developed a solid foundation for deep spiritual life. Their dwelling with the Lord was not without activity. Rather, they dynamically engaged with the word of God and familiarity with the divine will. One of such activities that familiarised them with the word of God is their preaching apostolate, which they shared with the Lord. “The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him, in pairs, to all the towns and places he himself was to visit. He said to them, ‘The harvest is rich, but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to this harvest.” Their sharing in the concern of the Lord opened their eyes to the harvest of the Lord. The awareness of the harvest and the need for labourers constitutes a spiritual awakening that keeps us attentive to the will of God for us. The spiritual awakening is in faith and the seed of prevenient grace. Saint Luke had this experience through his steadfast accompaniment of Paul in his preaching apostolate and missionary journeys. Paul testifies to his steadfastness in the passage quoted above. He was a Greek medical doctor who converted to Christianity. Accompanied Paul and wrote his account of the Gospel in accordance with Paul’s teaching. He is also the author of the Acts of the Apostles, which preserves the history of the apostolic Church. May his prayers help us to remain steadfast and consistent in faith.
Let us pray: Lord God, who chose Saint Luke to reveal by his preaching and writings the mystery of your love for the poor, grant that those who already glory in your name may persevere as one heart and one soul and that all nations may merit to see your salvation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
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