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.
There has always been research, commentary, etc. on what Jesus looked like. From the inheritance of Christian art in the West, we often see/imagine a man with long hair parted in the middle and a long beard – often with fair skin, light brown hair and blue eyes. It is historically far more likely that he looked like a typical Galilean of his time. But that is another topic. How about what did Jesus wear? Were we subject to the same “branding and imagery” on long robes and the like? One link to another which led me to a website with which I was not familiar: The Conversation. It is described as a network of not-for-profit media outlets that publish news stories on the Internet that are written by academics and researchers. Its funded comes from its university members, government and other grant awarding bodies, corporate partners, and reader donations. I can’t tell you a lot more than that, but I did run across and interesting article: What Did Jesus Wear? I found it interesting, so enjoy. 
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