This Big Thing Called Grace
I have to admit, when I was making my way back to the Church, I had no idea what the word “grace” really meant.
Of course, I’d heard it all my life — before dinner (“Bless us, O Lord…”) — and I’ve cried through Amazing Grace more than a few times. But if you’d asked me back then to explain it, I probably would’ve shrugged and said, “Something about being polite?”
Let’s just say I wasn’t exactly ready to teach Catechism.
Lost and Found
Everything changed when I realized — really realized — that I had been lost.
Not just a little off track lost. I mean spiritually GPS rerouting every five minutes lost.
When I came back to Christ, something shifted that I couldn’t explain. It was overwhelming, beautiful, and unsettling all at once. Looking back, I think that’s what grace feels like — something undeserved, but unmistakably real.
At the time, I didn’t even know what had hit me. (Spoiler: it was the Holy Spirit.)
I didn’t have the language for what I was experiencing. I didn’t know how to pray or what to ask for. I just knew I had been asleep for a long time — and suddenly, I was awake.
The Lukewarm Years
For a long stretch, I coasted.
I was what you might call a “Cafeteria Catholic.” (You know, take what you like, skip the vegetables.) I was raised in the 70s, which meant my catechesis (education in the faith) left a pretty major weak spot. I knew the prayers and the rituals, but not the why.
I couldn’t have defended my faith if my life depended on it — which it actually does. Honestly, I didn’t think I needed to.
In 2020 came the uncomfortable realization that I had drifted much farther than I thought.
Because you are lukewarm, I will spit you out.
— Revelation 3:16
Ouch. That one hits different when you realize you’re the lukewarm one.
Bonus Reflection: The Lost “Why”
I’ve since learned that I wasn’t alone in feeling undernourished in faith. Many of us who grew up in the 70s were shaped by a strange mix of Church change and cultural chaos. After Vatican II, catechesis was meant to become more personal and alive — and in some places it did. But in many classrooms, the pendulum swung a bit too far from what we believe to how we feel about believing.
The world around us was changing fast — questioning authority, morality, truth itself — and the Church’s voice sometimes got drowned out in the noise. We learned the prayers and the rituals, but not the reasons behind them. And without that grounding, it became easy to think faith should bend with the culture. That firmness — that clarity — felt “unreasonable.”
Looking back, I see how that gap left me lukewarm for years. I didn’t reject the faith; I just didn’t know how to defend it. Or live it with conviction. Grace, it turns out, would do the heavy lifting later — waking up that hunger for the truth I’d been missing all along.
So What Is Grace, Really?
Eventually, I learned that grace isn’t just a feeling or a pretty word in a beautiful old hymn.
Grace is the free and undeserved gift of God’s very life poured into us. It’s what allows us to respond to Him, to believe, to love, to change. It’s not luck, good fortune, or divine brownie points.
It’s the breath of God in our souls.
As the Catholic Catechism says:
“Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to His call.” (CCC 1996)
Grace doesn’t just save us once — it keeps saving us, again and again. It’s the quiet nudge, the tear in your eye at Mass, the moment your heart softens when you least expect it.
Grace opens our eyes to how lost we were — and how loved we’ve always been.
Being Found
When I finally stopped running, God didn’t scold me or lecture me about how I should’ve known better. He simply found me.
And I found Him.
That’s when the hymn hit differently:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found…
For the first time, I understood it — not with my head, but with my heart.
I also began to see how many others were wandering too — not out of rebellion, but out of unknowing. We live in a world full of people searching for light, not realizing it’s already shining on them.
Grace doesn’t wait for us to be perfect. It meets us right where we are — in the confusion, the drifting, the in-between.
A Catholic Kind of Grace
For years, I thought “grace” was more of a Protestant thing. You know, one of those “born again” words.
But it’s deeply, beautifully Catholic.
Every sacrament is a channel of grace:
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Baptism — the first gift of grace, the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, and our entrance into God’s family.
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Eucharist — grace that feeds us.
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Reconciliation — grace that restores us when we’ve fallen flat (again).
Grace isn’t just what brought me back — it’s what keeps me here.
Still Amazing
I still can’t find perfect words for the experience that brought me back to Christ. Maybe that’s the point. Grace is something you live, not something you define.
All I know is that I was lost, and I was found — and that finding changed everything.
Now, when I sing Amazing Grace, I still tear up. But this time, it’s not confusion. It’s gratitude — deep, unshakable gratitude that the God I drifted from never stopped reaching for me.
And that, my friends, is what’s so amazing about grace!
Challenge
Take five quiet minutes today to reflect on a moment when you experienced grace — maybe even before you had words for it.
