Epiphanies of God's grace: A dialogue with my Christian mentors

Spiritual Life, Fall 1998 by Rojo, Mercedes

I CANNOT SAY FOR CERTAIN HOW LONG I have known that God's active and creating grace is an integral part of my life. Maybe always. Certainly the Ignatian roots of my spiritual formation since childhood must have had an influence on me. "Finding God in all things" sounds as familiar as the songs I heard as a child. Whatever the source of this inner knowledge, what I know is that it has kept growing and deepening in me, opening new vistas of the wonder and abundance of God's grace in my life. If in itself this is wonderful knowledge to havethat my loving God walks with me wherever I go-even more wonderful and challenging is the following realization: as I become more open and receptive to God's grace, the greater becomes my capacity to receive it and respond to it.

God's Epiphanies

The manifestations of God's presence, God's Epiphanies in my life, happen through the persons, places, and events of my daily life. I realize that there is a flow of grace that takes place here. As these persons, places, and events reveal God to me, the grace that I receive flows back into them. I call this process "Grace's Life Flow" for I believe it is not a one-time event or something that one arrives at after going through certain stages of spiritual growth. It is something more encompassing, a force that integrates all of the life-energy that is part of my daily experience.

The image that best expresses this process for me is that of a well. In his encounter with the Samaritan woman, Jesus tells her that there is a spring of living water that flows within us and will continue to flow until eternal life. I used to imagine this inner well as springing directly from God's center, and therefore the water it brought me was utterly pure and rich. Lately, while reflecting on the writings of some of the great masters of the spiritual life and letting them speak to my present experience, I have begun to see this water differently. Although originally springing from a divine and pure source, the water has traveled many miles and passed through many places before reaching my well. It has moved through lush green meadows and warm, sunny places; icy cold regions and rocky, barren lands. It has even passed through muddy and infested swamps before reaching my inner spring.

This image gives me a different understanding of the "living water" that Jesus offers me, the living water of my own well. This is a water that brings with it the riches of all the places I have traveled and of all the people I have met-a water that has within it the taste that my own poverty and brokenness, struggle and pain has given it. This water is no less rich or pure because it has passed through some of the less-thanpure places. In fact, it is this very mixture of poverty and richness, of weakness and strength, that makes it the most nourishing. It is truly life-giving because it comes from true life. It is the source of my "lifeflow."

The following is a reflection on some of the landmarks of this lifeflow as I see them now. I call them "Epiphanies of God's Grace," for it is through them that I continue to encounter this wonderful Companion whose presence has always been one of amazing grace.

Knowing Self and Knowing God: Augustine, Clare, & Others

You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised: great is your power and your wisdom is immeasurable...and to praise you is our desire, for we are a piece of your creation. You stir us to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. (St. Augustine, Confessions, I,1) As I read Augustine's words, my heart resonates with him in his song of praise because the God of my experience is also "utterly good,...deeply hidden yet most intimately present...never new, never old, [and] making everything new...creating and nurturing and bringing to maturity" (I,4). Augustine knew this so well-his search for God was long-and it was only when he knew who God was that he came to know himself. This is the source of my water, the first landmark, the first "epiphany": knowing who God is and getting to know myself in the light of this knowledge.

Both Teresa of Avila and Ignatius of Loyola saw this as a first step in the spiritual journey. In the first mansions of Teresa's Interior Castle, she stresses the importance of self-knowledge as essential to someone beginning the spiritual journey. For Teresa, this self-knowledge does not focus solely on oneself but is grounded in humility-knowing who I am in relationship with God. In the "Principle and Foundation" of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius wants the retreatant to begin at the same place. He believes that only through this experiential knowledge of God's creating and sustaining love can one begin to look with an unflinching gaze at personal sinfulness as one enters the exercises of the "First Week." The integration in our life of who we are and who God is allows the "flow of life" to bear the gift of God's grace to us.

Clare of Assisi seems to have found this flow of life, this integration. The themes found in her writings are few and repeated: her life and that of her sisters must be totally centered in Christ, imitating him in his poverty, humility, and love. A mirror, an image she uses often, is a powerful one to express how this centeredness can be achieved. For Clare, Christ is the mirror in which we study ourselves: Inasmuch as this vision is the splendor of eternal glory, the brilliance of eternal light and the mirror without blemish, look upon that mirror each day...and continually study your face within it so that you may adorn yourself within and without with beautiful robes. (Fourth Letter to Agnes, 14-18)