I speak to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Today’s collect has us reflecting on the nature of God’s grace. We pray today that God’s grace may always prevent and follow us; make us continually to be given to good works. It is one of those collects that reminds us that God is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent in the world that surrounds us.

This is a thought that should provide each of us with a great sense of comfort for grace, in Christian theology, is the supernatural assistance of God bestowed upon a rational being with a view to his sanctification. (I use that personal pronoun in the Biblical sense, not the secular sense). Comforting indeed especially for those wags who wryly proclaim that grace is their preferred route to heaven; duly recognizing their deficiencies in good works and sour dispositions.

Yet good works are indeed part of the equation, not that good works open the gates of heaven to us, but that good works are required, even demanded, of us by God as evidenced by the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. The means by which we do this is through the workings of grace within us.

While the necessity of this aid, grace, is generally admitted, the manner of it has been a subject of discussion among Christians since the fourth century. In Scripture the word “grace” is most common in the writings of St. Paul as seen is today’s epistle, but the idea is widespread.

St. Thomas Aquinas, one of my favourite theologians and not to the denigration of other theologians I can assure you (in fact good Anglicans everywhere should pay heed to Aquinas for his writings on doctrines such as original sin and the ramifications for its import on dogmas proclaimed by other churches, but I digress), wrote that grace has five effects in us:

          1. Our soul is healed.

          2. We will the good.

          3. We work effectively for it.

          4. We persevere.

          5. We break through to glory.

Glory is a double edged sword. In today’s world glory and seeking are seen as a bad thing. Glory has lost its meaning in the eschatological sense. Today glory means the here and now and by what means does it further our reputations. Good Christians are supposed to be committed to service without thought of reward. We are not in it for the “glory;” we only want to serve. The Gospel lesson for today reinforces this point. The glory of the chief seats at dinner do not amount to much. They are poor images of a higher glory. Beyond all vain glories there is a glory worth seeking.

Our part in all of this is the thoughtful acceptance of God’s grace, in word and sacrament, and in a thousand occasions of grace which surround us every day: in our work and leisure, in our associations with one another, in our troubles, and even in our sins. Imagine where we would be without grace, unable to recognize our own sins. Grace provides us with the means to our sanctification.

Jesus, during His earthly life, never ceased to recommend fraternal charity and union, so the Church in the Sunday masses continually preaches this virtue. Today we do so by virtue of the epistle. St. Paul beseeches us to walk worthy of the vocation by which we are all called. This is the vocation of Christianity, the vocation to love.

Father Gabriel wrote, quite eloquently, that “God, infinite charity, adopts us as His children, that we may so emulate His charity that love becomes the bond which unites us all in one heart, as the Father and Son are united in one Godhead by the bond of the Holy Spirit. We should be persuaded that all that disturbs, weakens, or worse still, destroys fraternal union, does not please God; it does not please Him even if done under the pretext of zeal.

So, it is theologically sound that we pray for God’s grace, for without it we can do nothing for our sanctification and that, ultimately, is the single most important consideration in our lives.