Lesson 5: Naming Grace

Introduction

This lesson aims to explore an authentically Catholic understanding of grace, as a response to the growing trend
of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, a symptom of the many prevalent misconceptions on grace amongst believers
of today, Christian or otherwise. This will be done by recovering an understanding of the sacramental principle,
as well as through various ways of naming grace in life.

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.

A. 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. 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. 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:

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.”

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.”
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.”
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.
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.” 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.’” 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”.

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.

B. 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.

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.”
“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.”

C. 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.

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.

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.” 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.” This is not a distant God. Instead, this is a God of
active and dynamic love, present in our lives—past, present and future.

D. The Liturgy, Sacraments 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.”
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.”

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 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.”

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. 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. In our joys and sorrows, God can be found, and we are reminded of this constantly in
the liturgical experience.

E. 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.

1. 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. 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.”

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 encountered. French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil describes beauty
as “the attribute of God under which we see him.” In another work, Weil describes encountering Christ’s “tender
smile for us coming through matter.” Here she describes how the contact of the artist encounters the beauty of
the world as being a sacrament. Augustine mentions a similar experience: “My questioning was my attentive
spirit, and their reply was beauty.”

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.

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.

2. 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.” 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.

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.”

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.” 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.” 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.
3. Experiencing God through Narrative

Another important resource for naming grace in our lives is by engaging narrative. “Biblical stories, historical
accounts, contemporary examples, and fictional tales can all form the sacramental awareness.”

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.

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.”

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 REVELATION)

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.” 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.”

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.