Training Ourselves to Be Open to Grace

Every morning at the Mount we begin prayer with a reading from the Rule of St. Benedict and a commentary on the passage. Today’s commentary was by Norvene Vest, from her book Preferring Christ:

“So often the key issues in the spiritual life are those moments calling for a spontaneous and immediate response. The way I have trained myself through my daily habits will make a great deal of difference in my capacity to receive the grace God would give me in such moments.”

As it happened, today’s Gospel reading for mass is about Jesus’ arrival at Bethany after Lazarus has died. Surely this could be considered a moment in the life of Martha that called for a spontaneous and immediate response. Understandably, she was upset with Jesus for not coming sooner and preventing the death of her brother and could have refused to welcome him, but she had trained herself through her daily habits of service to provide hospitality, so she went out to meet him. In doing so she received the grace that allowed her to recognize Jesus as the Christ and to trust in his promise that he is the resurrection and the life.

Undergoing training is not easy, whether we are preparing to play a sport or a musical instrument, learning a new job, or attempting to grow in spiritual wisdom. We must put in many, many hours of practice (some people say as many as 10,000!) so we are able to respond immediately and spontaneously when the opportunity arises to steal second base, improvise while playing a piece on the piano, fix a problem at work, or recognize Christ’s presence in difficult times. The times when we get impatient with the monotony of our daily training regimen are the very times we need to trust that God will prosper our efforts and that our dedication will lead to joy and freedom.