Michael Casey - Grace: On the Journey to God

GRACE

On the Journey to God

GRACE

On the Journey to God

MICHAEL CASEY, OCSO

2018 First printing

Grace: On the Journey to God

Copyright 2018 by Michael Casey

ISBN 978-1-64060-064-5

Unless otherwise indicated translations are the authors own. Websites listed were accessed in December 2017.

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Casey, Michael, 1942- author.

Title: Grace : on the journey to God / Michael Casey, OCSO.

Description: Brewster, MA : Paraclete Press, Inc., 2018. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017059864 | ISBN 9781640600645 (trade paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Grace (Theology) | Benedictines--Spiritual life. | Spiritual life--Catholic Church. | Christian life--Catholic authors. | Spirituality--Catholic Church.

Classification: LCC BT761.3 .C37 2018 | DDC 234--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059864

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All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press

Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

T he title of this book is very general: Grace: On the Journey to God. It is made up of a series of reflections on what we are likely to experience when we begin to give ourselves conscientiously to the spiritual journey. The closer we come to the end of this journey we are more probably inclined to agree with Georges Bernanoss character at the end of The Diary of a Country Priest that grace is everywhere. The benevolence of God expresses itself in so many different ways as our journey unfolds. Gradually we come to realize that everything that happens in our life is somehow the gift of our loving Father. Occasionally this is apparent at the time; most often it happens in retrospect when the elements of wisdom are beginning to find a place in our hearts. This is why I have included the word grace in the titles of all the chapters in this book.

My aim is to be mainly descriptive, to talk about experiences we may have on our spiritual journey, and to throw in some historical or theological parallels in the hope that you, the reader, may recognize yourself in what I say and take the giant step of concluding that perhaps you are normal after all. I cannot repeat too often: what you hear within your own spirit is more significant than what I say. My aim is to help you to listen to the voice of God in your heart. So, this book attempts to be an exercise in increasing our levels of spiritual literacyour capacity to read what is happening in our spiritual life, what the Holy Spirit is accomplishing in our souls at this time. Sometimes what we feel surpasses our powers to describe it, and this is where we are obliged to extend the scope of our spiritual vocabulary, to find words that can adumbrate what we are experiencing. It is also an invitation to look back on past years and to wonder at what God has done in our lives. This is the frequent admonition of the book of Deuteronomy: Remember! Although we have to keep our eyes on the goal and look ahead to the future, we also have to remain in contact with the pattern of Gods action in the past. This is the work that leads to wisdomas it were to extract all the juice from what our years of discipleship have taught us.

In this matter of spiritual literacy, it is always useful to operate within a tradition. This is why, over the past century, fervent Catholics have often attached themselves to one or other tradition or movement within the Church, supplementing what they received from their home parish with a formation and support that seemed to accord with their own spiritual aspirations. You will not fail to notice how heavily I am reliant on the great writers of the Benedictine and Cistercian tradition, especially Aelred of Rievaulx and Bernard of Clairvaux. The overt references are only the part of the iceberg visible above the surface. There is much more dependence on these sources that is underneath and is invisible even to myself. This ancient and well-tried tradition may not be very familiar to you, but you will certainly discover points of contact with your own approach. There is some advantage in looking at familiar matters from a different perspective, and it is my hope that the tradition that has nurtured me these many years may be helpful to you, the reader, in your own particular situation.

This book came to birth as a series of retreat conferences given to religious communities in different countries, and some of my examples and applications are drawn from life in a monastic community. Given my own background and experience, that is probably inevitable. It is my hope, however, that the themes covered are sufficiently general to enable those in other walks of life to find in them echoes of their own experience.

The specific slant that I want to give to this book is to group themes around the word grace. We know that there is always a tendency to the ancient heresy of Pelagianism wherever people are a little bit more fervent; the temptation is to put too much emphasis on what they dosometimes with much effortand not enough on the invisible action of Gods grace. Even poor John Cassian (360435) was accused of being a Semi-Pelagian because his spirituality was not on the same page as that of Augustine, his more famous contemporary (354430). So, the point that I want to emphasize is that the most important happenings on our spiritual journey are not the result of our own actions but are gifts of God, given directly or indirectly, including what may seem, at first, to be accidents, tragedies, or disasters. When we fail to detect their source we often misjudge how to respond to them. We have to restate the principle that is surely well-known to us all that what God does to us or for us is far more beautiful and effective than anything we can do to ourselves or for ourselves.

I have included a prayer at the end of each chapter in the hope that the reader may take the opportunity to stop reading and thinking and move into a different space, perhaps to take a few moments for prayerful reflection. I expect that not everything I say will be self-evident and at least some of it may seem counterintuitive. This is why I recommend that you test what I say against your own experience. I am not infallible; your own experience of the ways of God will be a better guide than anything I write. What I propose is offered merely for your reflection. I am not interested in propounding a systematic theory of the spiritual life; what I offer is an attempt to describe some of the realities we may encounter on our journey, in the hope that you, the reader, may have more success in capturing those fleeting moments when a glimpse of something greater appears and, like the travelers to Emmaus, you find your heart burning as you walk along the road.

Lord God, you are the origin and source of all our good works