As some of you know, in my morning devotions I've been reading through a 5 volume work called the Philokalia. It's a collection of writings from the desert fathers, but the later volumes go beyond the early Church. I read an abridged version of it as part of the research for Praying Like the Early Church but now I'm reading the full 5 volumes. Right now I'm in a section by St. Maximus the Confessor, which dovetails nicely with my research for Praying Like the Mystics since I will be making the case that St. Maximus is the first true mystic. In any case, I came across this insight this morning which I thought I would share...

We often acknowledge that the human mind is finite and limited - we say this when we're talking about things like the doctrine of the Trinity, and we admit how we can never fully know God in his essence, and all that - but often this admission really just amounts to paying lip service to our "smallness" compared to God's greatness, and it's a nod to humility before we launch into our theology. But the limitation of the human heart and mind is REAL, and the result of that is that there isn't room in there for both God and other things, and so there is this very practical inverse relationship between attachment to things and attachment to God. In other words, our minds and hearts can only hold so much, and to whatever extent we fill them up with earthly things they have less room for God.

St. Maximus specifically talks about certain gifts of the Spirit, like wisdom and knowledge ("spiritual knowledge" which is the gift of spiritual insight). He says you have to purify your mind of attachments to earthly things and bodily passions in order to make room for wisdom and knowledge. And then he says something that made me get out my journal and write it down. My paraphrase of it is: faith makes room for grace. Maybe this should be obvious, but he really hammers on this point that (again in my paraphrase of it) if you feel like you don't get enough grace, it's because you don't have enough faith.

Now before you do that thing where you say, "But faith is also a gift" - Maximus defines faith in terms of "what we bring to the table" - that is, what is our contribution to that synergy of cooperation with God's grace. And it's only three things. This is what we should bring to God:

1) the desire to do what is good
2) gratitude and love for God
3) surrender (submission) to God's will

Bringing these three things to God, and especially the surrender, which amounts to detaching from all the other things we might put our trust in, constitutes the kind of faith that facilitates grace. To surrender to God is to detach from all the things that replace God in our lives, and that detachment is what makes room for God and God's grace.

Faith is more than belief - after all, to say you believe is to claim only as much as the devil (James 2:19). Real faith goes beyond just believing in God, to trusting in God, which is to say, submitting to God's will. That requires admitting that God's will is better than your own (often the hardest part of faith). I think many of the people to whom Jesus will say, "I never knew you" are the ones who had belief but not trust. They knew about God but they didn't know God because they didn't surrender to him in gratitude and love, and out of a real desire for what is good in the long run. Most people choose what they think is good in the short term, and by doing so they fall into the same mistake made by Adam and Eve.

So when we feel like we lack grace, rather than asking God why grace is not forthcoming, we need to ask ourselves what is getting in the way of grace. What is occupying the space in our hearts and minds that leaves no room for grace. This is what I'm working on these days, and as it often happens, God speaks to me when I read, and by his providence, I often read exactly what I need precisely when I need it.

A blessed Divine Mercy Sunday to you all!