August Allocutio 2024
Grace builds on Nature
Fr. Paul Churchill, Concilium Spiritual Director
This old and wise maxim, used by many saints, is crucial for a sound spiritual life and is a solid principle for authentic holiness.
Reason and our own efforts help hold life together but need grace to perfect it. This is all the more so because we suffer from a fallen nature which is hampered by sin, anxiety, poor judgement and weak will. To rely on natural efforts will only produce limited or no good fruit. But equally—and this needs saying— to rely solely on grace and prayer and not attend to nature’s deep needs or society’s responsibility would lead to grace having limited or no effect.
Why does a baby cry? Hungry, tired, irritated by a rash, some loud noise that has frightened it? Would a mother turn to prayer and trust God without responding immediately to the baby’s cry? No. She will pick the child up and seek to help it by the paps or bottle, or check if it is wet, or try to work out why it is so upset.
We are all grown up babies with basic needs of nature that require attention. And some of our responses in life have as raw a source as that of the baby: we have a deep human need that is being frustrated. We need attend to nature but also work with grace to help respond in the best way. Praying can be helpful but prayer alone will not solve the many needs of human nature. So for example a man who responds to his wife’s unhappiness by suggesting that they simply pray together and trust God without first listening to what his wife is unhappy about and challenging himself on something he may be doing, is at risk of losing the girl he loves. We all have to work on the natural side of things first.
Aquinas uses the words, “Grace perfects nature”. By that phrase he suggests that nature comes first. The use of the verb “perfect” means there is already something good in nature. Indeed when God made man he describes him as very good. We must try and put right what needs sorting out at a natural level so that grace can work. An image that might be helpful is that of putting an undercoat of paint on first before you put the gloss or emulsion over it. If you do not put on the undercoat the risk is that the job will fall apart and you’ll have to do the job again, and perhaps with greater difficulty. Getting Nature right is that undercoat we have to put in place so that grace can perfect things.
Our Lord, in his Last Judgement parable, tells us we will be judged on our response to basic needs. “I was hungry, thirsty, lonely, suffering and you came to my help”. He does not mention prayer, or Mass or the Rosary. Does that mean that we ignore prayer and follow, e.g. communism? No. Because of fallen nature we are at risk of selfishness and pride hampering how we respond to the least of the Lord’s brothers and sisters. To help us respond in the best possible way to needs in nature we have to step aside and seek God’s guidance and help. The best results are achieved by both working together, our natural efforts and God’s grace.
If we lose touch with nature we can only end up with aberrations. To take on a celibate life is to run the risk of going contrary to nature. And many a person, unfit for this, who has ttied this road, has run into many difficulties. I don’t need to spell that out. Nature shows us that girls are most fertile from 14-19 years of age. But today with many leaving off till their thirties having children we also have a new world of unhealthy manifestations. Women, in a desperate effort to beget a child before time runs out, sometimes marry a man who does not fit the criteria for the biblical “suitable helpmate”. Or what about men seeking very unhealthy outlets for their nature on the internet or elsewhere.
We do need to stand back and attend to nature while also asking God’s help. The modern world seems to have abandoned the solid rock of nature by turning to unnatural behaviors. The counter-risk is to turn solely to the spiritual or supernatural as if that alone suffices. God made both nature and supernature. They both belong to him, they both belong together. Holiness is about integrating the two and allowing grace to perfect nature.
Frank Duff once wrote about Mary having hens in Nazareth. He also mentions her vegetable plot. Mary had to do the most ordinary things. Her holiness is integrated in being a wife and mother and running a household. When it was eventually revealed that Catherine Laboure was the person to whom Mary gave the image of the Miraculous Medal many in her community were astonished. She was just so ordinary and unremarkable. Genuine holiness often so blends in with the background of nature that it is not immediately noticed.
I fear that some have disjoint entities of themselves, one for Church, the other out there in a different world. You are sincere in your prayers and being a member of the Legion of Mary. But you have one or two sides to you that you’d be ashamed for anyone to know. You need to connect with that before God because nature may be screaming at you. And the devil can play havoc with this disconnect in you. Are you in touch with what makes you tick? Behind the outer veneer might the one only agenda of my life be myself, my security, my belly, my prestige? Or might you have molded your “religion” to suit your local culture, your nationality, some political or ideological position? It has you chained and creates an obstacle to your freedom to serve God.
Richard Rohr wrote a work entitled Falling Upwards. He points out that maybe what seems a fall in our spiritual or moral life can be a moment of grace. We have to rethink and maybe deal with something that was unhealthy in us. And then there is the man who climbed the ladder of success only to find that the ladder up against the wrong wall! Let us never forget St. Paul who was the most zealous of his religious group but who still had not connected with what God wanted before his conversion. He had to go away after his conversion to his original home and process all that happened over three years before he became active in the Church. We too need to process. Like Mary we need to ponder.
Our Lord used an image of a woman kneading bread after she had added yeast and kept kneading to make sure it was evenly distributed. An image perhaps from the kitchen in Nazareth, learnt from Mary. But we too need to work on our natural selves while also putting in our prayer and conscious efforts for God and calling on his help so that we get ourselves right and out of that begin to bring good fruit. But always keeping an eye to what God is saying to us in our nature. It is a life-long task that never ends. I know of no saint who had it all together before he/she died. Indeed, death is the sign we still have not got it together, we have another step to go. Our Lady alone has been perfected. Let us again ask the one among us who has been assumed body and soul into heaven, “Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death”. Amen.
