Trick is to stop chasing grace and let it find you - excerpted from, 'Chasing Grace: Reflections of a Catholic Girl, Grown Up - Starting Point - Column

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 19, 1997 by Martha Manning

I wish there was an installment plan for grace. So I would know that I was definitely going to get my monthly allotment -- no matter what. But it never works like that. I'm never clear on whether it's grace that comes and goes, or whether it's my ability to experience it that varies so much. It seems like I'm always tearing after it, afraid I'll never catch it, or if I do, that there won't be enough.

I believe that there are grace-filled people and places that are endowed with a spirit that pulls us toward them. In proximity to them, we feel different. Hope makes inroads into despair, forgiveness challenges anger, courage prevails over fear, and health conquers illness. People flock to the places where the Blessed Virgin has appeared in the form of weeping statues or healing wells, from Medjugorje to Lourdes to Conyers, Ga. Her messages are so similar that they almost look trite printed on holy cards and medals. Work and pray for peace, she tells a world that finds it easier to believe in almost anything rather than the possibility of world peace.

I don't pretend to understand these things. I'm not even sure I believe in the actual fact of them. Does the statue cry real tears? Is Mary appearing in Georgia?

I don't know.

It doesn't really matter because I believe in the belief. When people gather to experience the power of that belief, I believe it is miraculous. I don't need to wait for the years of study and documentation by physicians and Vatican hotshots. I believe that when people sincerely seek holiness, they actually carry some of it with them to the destination of their pilgrimage. Their holiness combines with other people's, and the place becomes more sacred with time. Some would say that it was sacred before the people started coming. That could be. But to me the greatest miracle is just that people come and keep coming, to search, to worship or just to hope.

My holy place is a monastery. I go there to remember who I am. Sometimes I like the answer. Sometimes I don't. If there was ever a place of grace for me, it is that one, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and intersected by the Shenandoah River. Its holiness is in its simplicity, in its great reverence for nature and all other gifts of God.

The repetition of the monastery invites me to slow down, which is so hard for me to do. Some of the services that mark the monks' days allow for slight variations in content, Others are exactly the same every single day. Chants, readings and prayers. The same time, the same words, the same hypnotic melody. On the first day of every retreat, I can't wait for the services. They move me so much that I become quite convinced that I am an excellent candidate for the monastic life. But by the second day I squirm in my seat and my clothes feel uncomfortable as I endure the long chanted prayers. "Didn't we just do this yesterday?" I think impatiently. How do these guys stand it? Does anyone just go wild one day and break out singing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" or "Losing My Religion"? I can almost feel the remote control in my hand, flicking it with itchy fingers, desperate for something to engage my hard-to-hold attention.

When I return to my room, my eyes sweep the space, instinctively checking for faxes, mail and messages. I pace the room for a while, think about how long before it will be all right to grab another piece of cake from the dining room and figure out how the hell I am going to kill the three hours before bedtime. I wonder how I've lasted five days before -- no talking, no business, no television or radio. No nothing.

And then something happens. I remember why I am at a monastery and not a hotel. Hotels don't have monks. So I watch the monks. And in watching them I realize what I have lost and come to understand how I might get it back. I remember how to look closer and longer, to listen harder, to recover that fragile sensuality that is so easily snuffed out by the sensory overkill in my life. I find joy where it's always been, in the broad brush-strokes of the mountains when their color changes from green to blue as day moves toward night. It is in the details. The joy is in finding the best corner of the meditation chapel to watch the sunset, the many differences in the songs of the birds, the walk in darkness from the chapel to the guest house, my steps crunching on the gravel, guided by the narrow cast of my flashlight in a mist so thick I imagine, for a moment, that it's heaven.

At the monastery, everything becomes a prayer. Reading. Walking. Even washing the dishes. When I maximize any experience by appreciating the richness of its simplicity, I come closer to the holiness I so desperately seek. It is here that I stop chasing grace like it's a subway car just closing its doors. At the monastery, I stop all the running, and finally, I let grace find its way to me.