The Battle for Grace in Modern Times
Summary
- Introduction to Mercy and Warfare
- The Debt of the Servant and God's Mercy
- Abusing the Mercy of God
- Complacency and Presumption
- The Role of Grace
- Our Call to Fight
- Overcoming the World, the Flesh, and the Devil
- The War of Charity
- Conclusion: Living in Grace and Peace
Introduction to Mercy and Warfare
Something of a strange dichotomy in the Gospel and Epistle today. On the one hand, you have St. Paul preaching about fiery darts from the wicked one and about all the armor and preparation that we need. The weapons that we need to be able to fight. The principalities and the powers that are above this world. But then our Lord is the one preaching about a servant who is so ungrateful for the mercy that He has received, that he abuses the next person he sees in the exact same way that he had just received mercy.
So it seems like there's a little bit of a dichotomy, but the church never does anything by mistake. It's never just random that these epistles and gospels are mashed together in the same mass. These readings are mashed together because they are dealing with the exact same battle. And the fact of the matter is, when we consider it, we have received mercy.
The Debt of the Servant and God's Mercy
When we look at the Gospel, we think about what it was that was forgiven of the servant, how much he was forgiven. First of all, how did he get into so much debt? 10,000 talents is an immense sum. Someone said one time it was worth about $5 million. I have no clue. I don't know what the exchange rate is, but it's enormous. It's a huge amount of money. And he was forgiven. It was just wiped clean.
Now, first of all, obviously, there was something wrong with how he was a servant, because he incurred that kind of debt on his master's credit card, as it were. How on earth did that happen? There must have been some form of corruption. And yet the master still forgave him.
Now, this is an analogy of Christ forgiving us of our sins. We don't deserve it. It’s not something we deserved, and it’s our own fault that we have sins in our souls, except for original sin. It's our own fault. Every actual sin is ours. And we don't deserve God's mercy. And yet He still gives it. He forgives entirely all that we have because the only thing we truly possess is our sins. All the good things about us come from God, and as a result, God wipes us clean and leaves only Himself for us, only the good for us.
Abusing the Mercy of God
What is our reaction? As often as not, we immediately go out and we abuse God's mercy. Whether it's in this case with somebody else by not forgiving them, not having the same mercy and compassion to those around us as God has had on us, or whether it is in any other form. It is easy for us to start abusing the mercy of God because it is so glorious, but also because it's not so tangible.
We tend to abuse the mercy of God, which means that we don't understand what God is doing for us when we receive the mercy of God. Quite literally, He is wiping away, cleaning the slate for us, but also He is filling us with His grace.
Complacency and Presumption
They will use complacency and they will use a lack of confidence. They will use scruples. They will use despair. Those are the two things that they will use—complacency to the point of presumption: "God has always forgiven me. God has always wiped the slate clean. God has always taken care of me. So I'll just keep going the way I'm going, and I'll just kind of glide into heaven."
Not understanding that the battle that has been waged for our souls is an absolute all-out war. The devil is happy for us to just stay complacent. The world is happy to be friends with us because that means we're complacent and easily moved, easily pushed, easily toppled.
The Role of Grace
Contemplate, consider what grace is. Grace is the glorious union of God's own created nature into our nature. God, for some inexplicable reason, loves us so much that He gave us His very nature. And that is the life that we now have within us—not just the life, not just the everyday life that we have, which is the natural life, but now we actually possess a citizenship to heaven. We are adopted children of God. We share by participation in His very nature, in His very glory, His peace, His power. Everything that He offers, everything that He is, is now ours.
Our Call to Fight
We have to work. We have to fight. And in order for us to fight, we have to be as absolutely ready for war as possible. We have to be soldiers. We have to prepare. We have to train, we have to learn, and we have to respect the fact that we are different because God in all of His love has elevated us to the level of His children. That is what grace is. He has made us His children by adoption—not by nature, but He has shared His nature with us so that when He looks upon us, He should see Himself.
Overcoming the World, the Flesh, and the Devil
The world, the flesh, and the devil hate what we have. They hate us because we have it. And they will do anything and everything, and they don't play by the rules, to be able to drag us down. They will use their two favorite and most powerful enemy and powerful tools and weapons to do this. Specifically, they will use complacency and they will use a lack of confidence.
The War of Charity
The final goal is that charity and grace reign absolutely supreme in each and every one of us. Permeating every part of our being that we surrender to His love and to His grace and be controlled and commanded by it. That is the war that we must wage. It is the war of charity. It is the war of giving of ourselves for these people. And for ourselves, too, but not for us, but for the life of God within us.
Conclusion: Living in Grace and Peace
We complain about the world. We complain about the situation around us. But the fact of the matter is, we are supposed to be the ones who spread the light and beat back the darkness by letting the grace flow through us. But in order for that to happen, we have to fight ourselves and overcome ourselves and our selfishness and let grace reign supreme.
There is true peace in grace. There is true calm in living in grace. Even though we may be at war, we may be absolutely guaranteed of perfect calm and perfect peace in the battle and in the torture that we are going to have to suffer to win our place in heaven. It is necessary. It is necessary. But that peace comes at a cost. It is the surrender of ourselves, the violent surrender of ourselves to God.
So we strengthen our faith. We make acts of confidence in God. We surrender ourselves to Him. We do battle against our vices and our imperfections. We figure out strategies about how we're going to overcome the sins we seem to confess all the time. What ways can we overcome them? How can we battle them? How can we fight them?
And we do everything within our power to use the tools and the weapons that God's grace has given us so that we may be able to live that grace and may be able to extend that grace to others, offering to them the same mercy we have received, and by doing so, extend the Kingdom of Christ here on Earth. And by doing that, we may establish His reign of peace all throughout. Because one day God's grace will carry us into heaven so that we may live in His presence, not just through grace, but through the beatific vision, and may be eternally at peace with Him having conquered the world with our war.