Tag Archives: Bible

Prevenient Grace

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This time of year the OCIA meetings are well into the Sacraments of the Catholic Church. There are a lot of discussions and questions about grace and the terms the Church uses to describe grace: sanctifying, actual, sacramental, charismatic and prevenient. It is the last one that people are least likely to be familiar with.

Prevenient (from the Latin: comes before) grace is a concept that refers to the grace of God that comes before any human action. It is the grace that enables a person to respond to God’s call and to choose to follow Him.  It has been described as God’s safety net placed beneath everyone, giving them a chance to choose whether to grab onto it or fall. It’s God’s ongoing, prior work in every life, making salvation a real possibility for all, not just a few.

St. Augustine of Hippo developed the concept of prevenient grace (Latin: gratia praeveniens, “grace that precedes”) as God’s divine initiative, a grace that comes before any human action, drawing people toward faith by overcoming the bondage of sin, enabling a desire for God, and preparing the soul for conversion. Prevenient grace can be understood as God’s initial help that allows us to respond to Him and make good choices. It’s about God reaching out to us first, even before we realize it or take any steps toward Him.

St. Basil Great has a wonderful description of prevenient grace in his Detailed Rules for Monks:

Love of God is not something that we can be taught.  We did not learn from someone else how to rejoice in light or want to live, or to love our parents or guardians.  It is the same, perhaps even more so, with our love for God:  it does not come by another’s teaching.  As soon as the living creature (that is, man) comes to be, a power of reason is implanted in us like a seed, containing within it the ability and the need to love.  When the school of God’s law admits this power of reason, it cultivates it diligently, skillfully nurtures it, and with God’s help brings it to perfection.

God desires that all be saved (1 Timothy 2:3-4) and before our first moment of being is already at work in our lives.

How to begin to read the Bible

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From time to time people tell me that “this year I am going to get into the Bible!” Music to my ears! Their declaration is quickly followed by something akin to “So, what should I do?” Maybe next week I will take a cut at answering that question, but for now let me explain how not to read the Bible! I would offer you five basic principles to keep in mind: Continue reading →

Curating our stories

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Over the last two pastor’s columns I have been talking about stories: sharing your story with God as part of the Sacrament of Reconciliation and just last week, sharing your stories of God with your family. And I continue to think about our stories of faith and this life of grace.

One of the amazing moments of my sojourn to Israel this summer was actually holding mustard seeds in my hand. And, trust me, you had to look very closely. I took a picture and when I show it to people most guess that it is very fine grains of dirt. When I say that it is a mustard seed, then the power of Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed comes to the fore. Continue reading →

Catholics studying the Bible

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It was a simple e-mail. The writer said that she was committed to reading and studying the Bible. For her first time through, she wanted to accomplish it in a two-year period. She had already researched the Internet for Bible study plans and discovered there are tons of plans, lots of perspectives, and advice a plenty. So much so, it was hard to sort through it all. And such was the genesis of the e-mail asking for advice on “the plan.” Continue reading →

Because we’re Catholic

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The great Catholic Biblical scholar, Rev. Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, started one of his books with the story of some traveling evangelists coming to his home in Boston when he was about 10 years old. This was around 1950. When his Irish-Catholic mother opened the door, the “ministers of the Word” said that they’d like to come in and discuss the Bible. “We’re Catholics,” she said. “We don’t read the Bible.” Fortunately, things have changed since then – but then again, in some ways, not. Sometimes we are more like Mrs. Harrington than we want to admit.

In his book, “How Do Catholics Read the Bible?” Fr. Harrington provided a wonderful introduction to the “what” and “why” of reading the Bible.

Christianity is sometimes described along Judaism and Islam as a ‘religion of the book.’ However, that description is not entirely accurate, since Christianity is really the religion of the person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, to whom the words in the church’s book [the Bible] bear witness. Or better still, Christianity is the religion of God understood and experienced as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Bible, or Holy Scripture, the book that was both created the church and was created by the church, is a privileged witness to God’s dealing with the people of God in both the Old and the New Testaments.

That is as concise a summary as I have seen. It clearly carries the thoughts and ideas of the two great 20th Century church documents on Scripture – Dei Verbum (The Word of God; Vatican II) and “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” from the Pontifical Biblical Commission. Let me point out just a couple of highlights of these two important documents.

First, Dei Verbum looks at the Bible as an instance of God’s personal self-revelation to us. That’s important: God communicates himself so that we can come to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life and be with Him in the next. As one of my Franciscan brothers writes, God wants to date us, get to know us, and commit to an eternally lasting relationship.

Second, both documents look carefully at the relationship between Scripture and tradition. In the Catholic Church we consider tradition to be guided by the Holy Spirit, and so Vatican II emphasized the close relationship between Scripture and tradition, describing them beautifully as both “flowing from the same divine wellspring.” Christians have been faithfully reading and reflecting on Sacred Scripture for two millennia, all the while guided by the Holy Spirit. Their reflection, passion, and understanding are part of the tradition. As we read the Bible today, we are only catching up to our ancestors in the faith, joining them, joining the community of believers in our own “family history.”

Third, the Pontificial Biblical Commission’s document applauds our attempts to understand the different literary methods that are used in the texts – e.g., sometimes Jesus is indeed speaking in hyperbole. The Commission critiques the pure literalist / fundamentalist interpretation, which it calls “dangerous” as it has a tendency to take a book whose goal is to build a personal relationship with Jesus and reduce it to a rule book so as to engender a false certitude. The Bible is not a checklist of how to be in love with God.

In my own life, the Bible is a place where I encounter God. As my dad said, “the main thing is making sure the main thing remains the main thing.” The main thing is the person of Jesus. All the prophets and the Law of the Hebrew Scriptures point to Him. All the writers of the New Testament point to Him. So, I look to the Bible to meditate on what Jesus said and did during his ministry. How he lived. How he cared for people. And what we are meant to do as his disciples. It’s the main thing.

So, with apologies to Mrs. Harrington, because we’re Catholic we are people called to read the Bible and come to know the One who calls us into the eternally life-giving relationship.