THE BEAUTY OF SANCTIFYING GRACE

A SERMON FOR THE 19th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Under the symbol of a marriage feast, our Lord tells us today that everyone, with no exception, is called by God to save his soul.  Whether we are Jews or Gentiles, Catholics or non-Catholics, Christians or pagans, God has called us to his eternal happiness in heaven.  First, he calls his own chosen people, then, when they find all manner of excuses not to come, he sends out his apostles to the crossroads of the earth to call in the heathen nations.

The parable is easy to understand.  The king in the story represents God the Father, who sent his Son into this world to redeem us.  The divine nature of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, was espoused to his human nature, essentially forming in him a union between God and man, what theologians call the Hypostatic Union.  Through this union, God was able to suffer and die, as a man, while at the same time, as God, he could offer himself as a sacrifice, sufficient in his infinite nature to redeem all of mankind.

Although all of mankind is redeemed, that doesn't mean that all of mankind is saved.  We can achieve salvation only by responding to God's call and becoming a member of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, the Bride of Christ and his Mystical Body.  And even then, although membership of the Church is a necessary first step, that doesn't mean we are automatically saved.  The people who finally showed up at the wedding feast did not all end up having a good time.  In fact, some were bound hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!

So even though we may find ourselves today members of the Church, we cannot simply sit back and wait for heaven.  We must do something else to get there.  We must not dare to think of ourselves as "saved," like the Protestants do, simply because we have accepted Christ as our Lord and Saviour.  To save our souls we must first make sure we are wearing a wedding garment.  And what is this wedding garment we must put on?  It is sanctifying grace.  If we die in the state of grace, we are saved.  If we are not in the state of sanctifying grace when we die, we will surely be damned.  It's as simple as that!

At a wedding, when the bride walks down the aisle, all eyes turn to her, as we try to get a glimpse of her on her wedding day, the day on which all girls look their best in their long, white wedding dress.  At Italian weddings, you'll often hear exclamations of "Ah, che bella!"— how beautiful!  The wedding garment is indeed beautiful, and so is sanctifying grace.  In the Canticle of Canticles, Christ himself admires the beauty of this wedding garment of the soul.  He calls the human soul, in her mystical union with himself, "his spouse"—because he sees her adorned with this wedding garment of sanctifying grace.  He declares his love for her, and describing her beauty he exclaims in admiration: "O quam pulchra es, amica mea, sponsa!"  Oh, how beautiful thou art, my beloved, my spouse!

All that God created is beautiful, of course.  Man himself is a work of wonder, the king of creation, made according to the God's image and likeness.  Our body is a masterpiece of God's wisdom, with its intricate system of bones and nerves, veins and sinews, all linking together in a miracle of nature.  But how much more beautiful is our soul, an immortal spirit resembling even more the image of God.  Our soul allows the mind to travel faster than lightning from one object to another in this visible creation, and even into the world beyond.  With its free will, our soul is strong enough to resist any power of the world, any temptation of the devil.  And with sanctifying grace, our soul infuses such love into our heart that it is big enough to do anything and everything for love, ready to make any sacrifice for God or for the person loved.

We can look to the great creation that God made—the untold number of stars and planets in the skies, with the vast distances between them, the great mountain peaks and the depths of the oceans.  And yet we can look at any of these miracles of creation and know that we are greater still.  While we may be so very small in comparison, nevertheless we can turn to the vastness of creation and say to it:  "Ye mountains will pass away, ye stars will fall from their places.  Heaven and earth shall pass away, but I will not.  I will remain, for I have an immortal soul.  I am the king of this visible creation, for God has breathed an immortal soul into me."

Our Lord once showed St. Catherine of Siena a soul in all its natural beauty.  She was so ravished by the sight of its transcendent splendor that afterwards she would kiss the footprints of those priests who worked for the salvation of souls.   Seeing only the natural beauty of the soul inspired such a reaction in St. Catherine.  Imagine if we could see the soul's supernatural beauty.  We would kneel before each other, in awe, ready to make any sacrifice to preserve the sanctifying grace within ourselves and each other.

The famous writer, Fr. Alban Stolz, one day went to visit an orphanage with a younger priest.  Some children came running to meet them, among them a young girl all crippled and deformed.  The young priest whispers to Fr. Stolz: "Look at this miserable little creature.  What a pity!"  The old priest turns to him and says: "But Father, if only you could see her soul!"

St. Paul sees his converts from paganism before him with tear-dimmed eyes, because of their sins committed when pagans.  He consoles them saying, "But now you have been washed clean; now you have been sanctified; now you have put on Jesus Christ."  This is a wonderful and accurate description on sanctifying grace.  That we put on Christ like a mantle.  Indeed, it is Christ who enters into our soul in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, clothing our soul with the wedding garment of sanctifying grace.

We should resolve today never again to lose that most beautiful of garments.  We must value its beauty and never lose it.  If we have soiled it, we must wash it clean in the Blood of the Lamb in the confessional.  We must sanctify our soul more and more.  We must put on Jesus Christ.

And if we look after the wedding garment of our soul, we may look forward with peace and confidence to the day we appear before the throne of God.  Instead of hearing that dreadful pronouncement "Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?" we may instead hear from the lips of our Blessed Lord the words he said to the soul in the Canticle of Canticles: "Oh, how beautiful thou art!" with your wedding garment of sanctifying grace.