9781644135945

The Christmas Cycle
St. John mentions three sources of evil in the world; the more important are the concupiscence
of the flesh and the pride of life. The more a man loses himself in his own pride, the further
he is driven from God and truth. Sensuality is like a great weight on the shoulders of men; each
time they yield to it, the more firmly it becomes fixed in their soul and the heavier the burden
becomes. Sensuality stirs up the flesh to rebellion against the spirit, and as the gap widens
between them, men become more and more miserable. Unless the flesh and the spirit can be
brought to work in harmony, there can be no peace or rest for either. Men at times try to bridge
this gap by plunging headlong into vice, never satiated and never at rest. This violent separation
of the spirit and the flesh is the chief obstacle the soul meets in giving itself entirely to God.
In this terrible struggle the woman, the Church, intervenes by mixing the leaven of grace
with the meal of human passions. By means of grace she seeks to aid the spirit in subduing
the passions. Her task is not to settle the case of one or the other soul, but to bring about the
triumph of the spirit over the flesh in the entire human race: “Until the whole is leavened.”
The first step in elevating the soul is taken by God Himself. Knowing as He does that of ourselves
we can accomplish nothing, He takes the first step and infuses His gifts into our soul. He
lightens the burden of passions and quells the conflict between the spirit and the flesh. Grace,
the decisive factor in the struggle, tempers our proneness to evil and strengthens the powers
of our soul for the performance of good. Grace elevates the soul and strengthens the powers of
understanding, will, and memory. It accomplishes the work of restoration in a twofold manner,
as sanctifying grace and as actual grace.
As sanctifying grace it penetrates the soul as the heat of fire penetrates iron. The soul is
made to resemble its Creator; we become children of God and obtain possession of divine
life, and thus a new relationship is set up between us and God and between us and our fellow
man. By sanctifying grace we become incorporated in the body of Christ and live by Him as
the branch lives by the vine. As grace transforms and elevates the soul, so, too, its powers are
refined and strengthened so that we now see that we are able to perform actions that could not
be performed by merely human strength. With the infusion of the grace of faith, we obtain
an entirely new outlook on life. From that moment we see the world and all it contains, as it
were, through the eyes of God. We come to participate in the knowledge of the divinity. With
the infusion of sanctifying grace, divine love, too, is infused into our souls. God Himself is the
source of this divine love, and He is Himself consumed by it. With sanctifying grace we also
receive the virtue of hope, which comes to the assistance of our will. The virtue of hope counsels
us in time of doubt, strengthens us in time of weakness, fills us with confidence when we
hesitate, and urges us onward. This divine hope bolsters up our courage and keeps us aloof from
all things that would lead us away from God; it prompts us to depend on God’s strength. With
these three divine virtues, all other supernatural virtues are also infused into our souls, and we
are raised to a supernatural plane, far above the sordid surroundings into which we were born.
The second form of elevating grace is actual grace, which assimilates whatever is good in our
nature and perfects and supernaturalizes all the various elements of our being, directing them
toward the last end: the possession of God. It is distinct from our natural life, but penetrates
and leavens all the actions of our daily life. Even our habits of mind, the vagaries of our fancy, are
tempered by this grace and directed toward God. Grace is continually at work healing, shaping,
and transforming our fallen nature. Our hearts, even while on earth, must be fixed in heaven,
where God rules and Christ reigns as King.
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