Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
In our last reflection on Franciscan spirituality, we talked about how the Franciscan school equates charity with grace, we see charity and grace essentially as the same thing.
I just wanted to finish up that discourse in today's brief reflection, and we'll go back to the sacred scripture, we turn to our Lord's words in the Gospel of John where Jesus says in John 15 verse 4, he says, Abide in me, and I in you, as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
So what does it mean to abide in Jesus?
Well, he tells us in verses 9 and 10 of St. John's Gospel, chapter 15, he says, Abide in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you'll abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
So love which has its origin in the Father is like the divine atmosphere in which Jesus lives.
It's a divine atmosphere, it's a divinizing atmosphere too, which means it makes you share in God's holiness as well.
To abide in Jesus' love is basically to share in or participate in God's divinity.
To abide in Jesus' love is to live in his grace.
Just like when you live in a bad or sinful place, like a bad home or a morally corrupt town or city, that sinful atmosphere and that corruption rubs off on us, it can even infect us as well too.
So too, when you live in a holy place, that holiness can and should rub off on you too.
To live in the presence of God is to have his love and his holiness come upon you, to dwell in you, and change you for the good, and all that applies to God's grace.
In St. Augustine, the Doctor of Grace says that justice, meaning justification, or living in a state of grace, he says, justice is charity, and this in turn is grace.
Justice is charity, charity is grace.
We read that in his work De Natura et Grazia, number 70.
So it's on the heels of sacred scripture.
Some of the passages mentioned the other day, the passage today, and also St. Augustine, the Franciscan doctors affirm that substantial identity of grace and charity, that the two are substantially identical, to that grace and charity are two aspects of the same gift from God.
And we'll explain that a little bit.
The word grace means a gratuitous or a free gift, but the word grace doesn't tell you what the essence of that gift is.
The essence of grace is charity, because the fatherly love of God is poured out into us through grace, and that grace makes us capable of loving him in return, and loving him with a filial love, loving him with the love of a grateful son, the love of a grateful daughter.
Grace is called charity, says Blessed John Dunscotus, in that whoever possesses it holds God dear.
In this case, meaning when you call grace charity, God is regarded not as the one who loves, but as the one who is lovable.
Charity is called grace in that by means of it, God has someone who's pleasing to him.
In this case, God is regarded as the one who accepts or loves, essentially as the one who justifies us, not as the one who is lovable, unquote, says Blessed John Dunscotus.
So if you follow his thinking there, when we talk about charity, we're talking about the reality which makes God dear to us, which makes us think of God as someone or as the one who is lovable.
But when we speak about grace, we're speaking about that reality which makes us pleasing to God.
And we're thinking of or speaking about God in terms of him as being the one who...
It was so important that we had to stop everything to just repeat it, right?
Scotus says, when you talk about charity, we're talking about the reality which makes God dear to us, when we talk about grace, we're talking about the reality that makes us pleasing to God, essentially.
Scotus would say that charity is what makes God pleasing to us.
Grace is what makes us pleasing to God.
But again, it's really the same reality.
So to possess divine life within us, it's necessary for God to first love us, as St.
John says in 1 John 4, verse 10.
But it's also necessary that we welcome and reciprocate his love, because love is a two-way Grace is God's loving gift to us.
God whose love loves us, gives himself to us, but that grace also brings us back to him, back to God.
So grace is not only God's loving gift to us, but it's also our loving response to God.
God who is uncreated love, grace, which is created love.
Grace is charity, says the Franciscan School of Spirituality.
So let's ask Our Lady, the Mother of Grace, we can call Her the Mother of Grace, as we do.
Let's ask Her for the gift to understand and embrace that great love that She and Her Son and the Heavenly Father have for each and every one of us.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.