Recently, I’ve begun seeing an elderly Jesuit priest for spiritual direction. (I highly recommend the practice of spiritual direction by the way, and in my experience eccentric old Jesuits are the best!) We have started off by talking about grace. This has been yet another humbling experience in my life because I have once again discovered that my knowledge only scratches the surface.

We spent almost a half an hour just talking about what grace is and where it comes from. Since then, we’ve spent a lot more time talking about how we get it, if and how we can lose it, how we can get it back, and what we can do with it. I hope that this post can be a nice summary about grace for those of you who are as ignorant about it as me.

So what is grace? Simply put, it’s God’s divine life within us. It’s really that simple. But it’s also very deep. It is God’s divine life within us. How amazing is it to sit back and reflect on that? Not only do we have human life — with all of its strengths and weaknesses — but we also have divine, supernatural life within us. Well okay, it may be a little more complicated than that.

Where does this grace — this divine life — come from? Obviously, it comes from God, but how and when do we get it? We get grace in three ways: through the Sacraments, through prayer, and through good works (doing God’s will). So we first receive grace through baptism. We continue to receive grace through prayer, the Sacraments, and by aligning our will with the will of God.

Can we lose this grace? Oh, yes. When we knowingly and willingly do things that are gravely sinful (think Commandments), we can lose the grace of God within us. Does that mean that all hope is lost? Of course not! The grace of God can be restored within us through the Sacrament of Reconciliation! God is ever-merciful. He will always restore his grace within us if we come before him with contrite hearts, confessing all of our wrongdoing.

Okay, so now we’ve talked about all the formalities — granted, at a very high level. But what is so special about this grace? Well, maybe you need to re-read what grace is — it’s God’s divine life within us! Isn’t that pretty special? Yes, but what can grace do for us? Grace can help us gain that patience that we’ve always wanted. Grace can give us courage to do something that we’ve always feared. Grace can cure alcoholism. Grace can keep us from sin.

Make no mistake, all of us who have been baptised and are not in a state of mortal sin, have a reservoir of this grace within us. God is just pleading with us all to use it! Why do we keep repeating the same bad behaviors? Why do we keep confessing the same sins? Why do we keep picking up that pack of cigarettes, that bottle, that bag? We keep getting the same results because we keep doing the same things! We keep trying to solve our own problems. At best, the most we will do is turn to friends, family, or medical professionals. They can help some people, for some things. But for the things in our life that we never seem to be able to handle, the supernatural is our only true remedy. If we consciously look to use the divine life within us, grace, for the obstacles that we face, we cannot fail. If our motives are pure — if we seek only to do the will of God — he will never deny us his grace.

We are called to live very holy lives, and most of us fail miserably. If we use the grace that is already within us, we will slowly become more like God himself. We can then act as Christ on earth — which is what he expects. If we start using his grace to overcome the small challenges in our lives, we will quickly see how successful this new way of life can be. This confidence and experience should then inspire us to use God’s grace to seek perfection. We will never attain it, and we will always fall — but we can try. When we confess our sins, we must truly be sorry, but God doesn’t ask us to promise him that we won’t do those things again. How merciful and just is that? But by his grace, we will learn to lead lives that inspire others to seek God. This kingdom was meant to be shared. By his grace it shall be.