“The Most Important Mechanism of Grace”

I’m currently reading a book found within a series: “The Classics of Western Spirituality.” Below is a quote taken from the book’s introduction, which primarily challenges us to ask, “Is my life attractive to others?” “Is my Christianity based on grace and relationship or duty and works?”

I’m praying that the grace of our LORD will continue to marvelously work in and through you this summer.

“That we do have aspirations is taken for granted by our author, as by all early and medieval Christian writers. And he clearly shares the view, deeply imprinted on Western theology by St. Augustine, that it is through our aspirations that God draws us to himself. The most important mechanism of grace is that it forms in us a real will, a real desire, for God and for his will to be done. God attracts us to himself; he does not bully us or constrain us (except with the constraint of desire). The most typical evidence of grace being at work in us is not that we find ourselves aware of a duty, but that we find ourselves aware of a desire. This is why, with some important precautions, our author, like so many others, bids us follow our attractions and inspirations. Goodness is conceived of as being essentially attractive. This view, deeply rooted as it is in Greek philosophy, permeates Christian thought, and shows itself, for instance, in the assumption, shared by our author, that our Lord had quite outstanding beauty, and that those who follow [Jesus] will become themselves attractive to their fellow men and women.”

Emphasis and color added to the above quote; Walsh, John, ed. The Cloud of Unknowing. The Classics of Western Spirituality. (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1981), xii.