The freest but most undeserved divine gift is the Grace of God. In spite of our manifold sins, God generously showers us with His Grace like rainfall at the height of the rainy season.

In Matthew 7:7, it is said “Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you.” But even without our asking, or seeking, or knocking, God knows our individual and collective needs ahead of time, and supplies them at the time most appropriate. 

The quoted passage above is merely a re-assurance that God cares about us, and will outdo the earthly father who will not give his son stone if he asks for bread. Besides, God does not want us to be passive and docile in our own cause; rather, He wants us to be active agents in our own salvation.

Yet God continues to look after us even without any deliberate effort on our part to relate properly to Him. Do we know of how many close shaves and near misses we have had without even being conscious of them? Are the victims of such calamities greater sinners than we are? Most certainly not! The hospital, the prison, and the graveyard are three most undesirable places that we never wish to find ourselves.

Those who happen not to be there are merely enjoying the abundant Grace of God, and they have the duty to pray for those who find themselves there, often for no fault of theirs. 

Unfortunately, the Grace of God is all too often taken for granted, like the air we breathe in, forgetting that it is capable of being withdrawn without notice. Those moments when we feel abandoned and everything appears to be going the negative way are moments when the Grace of God is at its lowest ebb and needs to be consciously revived through intense prayers. 

Let us realize that the Grace of God works with the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Holy Trinity, who has never returned since his spectacular descent on the day of Pentecost after the Ascension of Christ, and is always around for us to call upon in times of need. He is the Comforter, the Advocate, the one through whom Holy Mary works as our Intercessor and Intermediary. 

God assigns personal guardian angels to each of us under the control of the Holy Spirit, for maximum protection through the ever-abiding Grace of God. The Grace of God is equivalent to God’s infinite love and mercy. God loves us unconditionally, and He expects us to love one another the way He loves us. Jesus Christ loves us to the point of death, even when we are totally undeserving of his love.

As Saint John tells us in his 1st Letter, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). It is this love that sustains us on a daily basis, and keeps us from all evils and temptations. 

But for the Grace of God, the Israelites would not have been able to escape from Egyptian captivity, and they might have perished in the wilderness. But for the Grace of God, the repentant inhabitants of Nineveh might have suffered the same fate as those of sinful Sodom and Gomorrah. But for the Grace of God, there would have been no Noah’s Ark to rescue Noah, his family, and the chosen creatures from the Great Flood that wiped away the first set of sinners on Earth. 

The Grace of God is always there for us, to keep us out of danger, seen or unseen. It is not the alarm clock, but the Grace of God, that wakes us up every morning after retiring for the night, and monitors our movements all through the succeeding day. The Grace of God proceeds from the eternal mercy of God. As stated in Psalm 103:8 and10, “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy…slow to anger, and abounding in loving devotion, forgiving iniquity and transgression…He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.” 

We are like prodigal children boldly approaching the Throne of Grace (Hebrews 4:16) and we are received back into the fold better than we actually deserve after straying away from the path of rectitude as we often do. Of all His creatures, human beings are the ones dearest to God, but they are also the most rebellious, always challenging His divine authority. But for the Grace of God, humanity would have been in a very sorry state indeed, going by the treatment that human beings truly deserve. 

However, although God abhors sins, He actually has pity on the sinner, and is always calling him or her to repentance. Hence, Jesus Christ, during his earthly ministry, put the sacrament for reconciliation in place, to be accessed freely by the repentant sinner. Catholics are particularly lucky to have sole access to the confessional, which returns them to the state of grace whenever they fall into sin.

The power to forgive sins has been handed over to the Apostles, and passed down the succeeding ages through the Popes, to Bishops and Priests for all eternity (Matthew 18:18). This facility is not meant to be abused by a flagrant use of it; but to be resorted to sparingly when our human flesh occasionally leads us to sin, with a determination to avoid sins that have been confessed, as much as possible. 

The struggle to remain chaste is a difficult and continuous action, founded upon the perennial Grace of God. So, each time we experience the uncommon favour of God that preserves us from some great calamity, let us remember to gratefully acknowledge that “but for the Grace of God, there I go.”