Recently some absent-minded person tracked
tar into my room… me! Don’t feel bad though. It
took me a while to realize what was happening. I
must have picked it up from hot asphalt some-
where. After looking at it powerlessly for a couple
of days, I decided to search for some solutions.
Have you ever heard of denatured alcohol? I sure
hadn’t. Anyway, nothing I had on hand was doing
it, so eventually we had the steamers come in. By
some magic, they left everything clear and pristine,
with a fresh, clean scent hanging in the air. What a
relief!

There are few things so relieving in life as
struggling against something for a long time, real-
izing we can’t do anything about it and feeling our
hope ebb away, only to be rescued by someone
else without lifting a finger! And that’s not a bad
description of grace in the Christian life. The Cate-
chism of the Catholic Church defines grace as “the
free and undeserved help that God gives us to re-
spond to His call to become children of God, adop-
tive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of
eternal life” (CCC 1996). Grace is something that
comes from outside of me and allows me to do
what would otherwise be impossible. It’s what lib-
erates me from my sins and the shackles of my
own interior darkness. Grace is a free gift that God
chooses to shower on us.

Of course, in addition to being a free gift, grace
also requires our cooperation. The steamers may
have rescued me this time, but I’m not going to go
around stomping in puddles of tar in the future.
The beauty of God’s grace is that it makes us fully
alive. Grace doesn’t substitute for my righteous-
ness—it transforms me from the inside out and
really makes me like Christ. This is what holiness
is: taking on more and more of Christ’s own life.
And that would be impossible, if not for grace, the
free gift of God poured into our souls which makes
up for everything lacking in us. What a relief!