Grace and Forgiveness

The teachings of the Catholic Church on grace might be summarized in the following points:

• The grace of the Holy Spirit confers upon us the righteousness of God. Uniting us by faith and Baptism to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, the Spirit makes us sharers in his life (2017).
• Faith, hope, and charity are the powers or habits that we need in order to be friends with God. Called the "theological virtues," we cannot acquire these abilities on our own; they must be given by God.
• By grace, God enables us to love him in friendship, to share in his enjoyment of his own divine life, and to love others as God loves them.

Weekly Meditation: The Morning Offering

It can be hard to rescue a day that's gotten off to the wrong start. How many days do we slip out of bed on autopilot, making the coffee, getting ready, and winding up at work before we've even made up our minds to wake up? How often do we let hours pass before we think to look around, to take everything in, to be grateful for the sheer fact of being alive? How often do we let days pass before we do the same?
 

• Habits form slowly, but once they've formed, they stick. Take a minute and think about your morning routine? What habits of mind, heart, and body have you created to help you navigate the morning? Are there habits that make it difficult for you to engage the day with a clear sense of purpose?

Each day that we wake up is a day bursting with promise and risk, hope and danger. Children grasp this intuitively. They leap out of bed, excited for what the day might hold. Grown ups learn that days run together, that they are more often than not just the same stuff over and over. Both are right. Children and adults both shape their days by their expectations from it. Children, full of wonder, expect wonderful things. Many adults, full of numbness and dissatisfaction, expect numb and dissatisfying things.

• One of the most evocative lines in the Psalms comes from Psalm 118: "This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Take another minute and think about this line. How would it change your day if this line expressed your firmest convictions in the morning? Consider making it the first thing you say to yourself in the morning.

Catholic tradition places great importance on the "morning offering," time spent upon waking to dedicate the day and all it contains to God. The morning offering can be as simple as reciting the Psalm line above with deep intention, or as detailed as reviewing your daily schedule and praying for the actions and commitments before you. What matters is that you set aside space to recognize, in the presence of God, that you are God's own and that God has given you the day as a gift and a challenge. When we prepare ourselves to encounter God's will in the moments that make up our day, we can more easily recognize and respond to what God might ask of us.

• Do you practice a form of the morning offering? Take a final minute to reflect on what your morning offering looks like. What small step can you take tomorrow morning to begin or deepen this practice?