Full of Grace

Originally posted at The Way of the Rose 54-Day Novena Facebook group August 20, 2020

Novena Day 8

The Sorrowful Mysteries

Mama Mary’s been prompting me to consider the idea of grace in a novena post. When we say the standard rosary, we say the phrase “full of grace” 53 times, so it must be a pretty important concept. I confess, my understanding of “grace” has always been a bit fuzzy. I’m sure it’s really awesome, but what exactly is it?

If you Google it, you’ll find all sorts of definitions. The two key elements seem to be the “favor of the divine” and “unmerited”—the idea being that “grace” is when God loves you even though you don’t deserve it.

So . . . Mary is full of unmerited divine favor.

Oy.

The divine favor part I’ll buy, but “unmerited”? That doesn’t make emotional or logical sense to me. It makes the divine sound capricious, constantly playing favorites. If you’re a favorite, you get grace. If not . . . them’s the breaks.

Mary is the avatar at the center of a rosary practice. How can her favor be “unmerited”?

Yeah, no. It can’t be. Mary is full of grace because she is the beloved creation of the divine and that favor is her due, and—this is key—she is open to receiving it. She lives in a constant state of divine potential.

We, too, are beloved children of the divine. Grace is our birthright.

I’m sure most Way of the Rose members know what grace feels like. While it may not have felt “unmerited” exactly, it may have felt accidental, as if we just happened to stumble across it and it could disappear just as quickly as it arrived. For me it feels like I’ve finally got my boat turned the right way around, and the current is doing all the work. But at any moment, the boat could turn sideways and get stuck in the reeds.

Our challenge is to figure out how to consciously magnify and extend the moments of grace, so that grace becomes a way of life and we too are “full of grace.” We need to clear out anything that may be blocking the flow of grace, like the traumas that keep us from accessing joy, like shame that tells us we don’t deserve divine favor, and like the conviction that someone else is our enemy.

This one strikes me as the biggest block to grace. Our divine Mother/Father loves us unconditionally, but we’re not the only ones, are we? Every being is just as deserving of divine favor as we are. If we see someone else’s favor as our loss, that is a sure way to shut down the flow of grace.

On the other hand, if we see another as a brother or sister, just as deserving of our Mother/Father’s love, and extend the grace we, ourselves, receive, we keep the flow of grace going and create space within us for more. Grace abhors a vacuum.

If by any chance you’re thinking, “Ha! Easy for her to say. She’s got it all figured out,” I feel compelled to tell you that I’ve only just figured out while writing this that grace isn’t some random subject that Mary dropped into my mind this week. It’s exactly what I’ve been praying for in my novena petition this month. And it’s related to everything I’ve written this past week.

When I ask Mama Mary to help me to know that “miracles are mine,” I’m asking her to help me learn to live in a state of grace.

Now I’m not sure whether this petition was her idea or mine . . .

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe she’s telling me that learning to live in a state of grace is how we get our hearts’ desires.