Experiencing God -Moments of Grace 1

The best and most beautiful things cannot be seen or touched – they must be felt with the heart. 

Helen Keller

If you take the time to reflect on the events of your life, you will, in all probability, remember special times of wonder, which I refer to as “graced moments”.  Many writers have spoken of these moments in their books and articles, and have usually described them as life changing, or moments of clarity and insight. 

For example, on March 18, 1958, Thomas Merton, a monk from the Gethsemane Abbey had an experience in Louisville, Kentucky that is documented in one of his books.  He says:  “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the centre of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.  It was like waking from a dream of separateness.  I suddenly realized that holiness did not require silence, isolation and renunciation of the world.”

St. Ignatius of Loyola described his graced moment in the following way:  “While sitting by the river Cordoner in Spain, and occupied in prayer, my eyes of understanding began to be opened.  Though I did not see any visions, I was enlightened with such clear understanding of many things concerning the spiritual, and matters of faith that everything seemed new.”  He went one to remark that what he experienced was with such clarity that all that he had learned through the previous sixty-two years of his life, if he had added them all together, would not be as much as he had received at that one time.

William Barry, S.J., in his book “Finding God in All Things” documented many other instances where people suddenly experienced a deep awareness of harmony, peacefulness and timelessness that left a deep imprint on their lives.  Least we think that such experiences are reserved only for the brilliant and important people, William Barry relates the experience of an elderly blind and dying woman whose name was Pearl Tull.  Pearl had lived a difficult life, being abandoned by her husband and left to raise her three children on her own.  She was now blind and dying.  He writes:

“One of Pearl’s sons had the task of reading to his dying mother from a diary that she had written as a child.  Pearl moved her son on quickly through the diary until he read this entry: Early this morning, I went out behind the house to weed.  Was kneeling in the dirt by the stable with my pinafore a mess and perspiration rolling down my neck, wiped my face on my sleeve, reached for the trowel, and all at once thought:  Why I believe that at just this moment I am absolutely happy.  My neighbor’s piano scales were floating out of the window, and a bottle fly was buzzing in the grass, and I saw that I was kneeling on such a beautiful green little planet.  I don’t care what might come about.  I have had this moment.  It belongs to me.”

This was the end of the entry.  Pearl thanked her son.  There was no need to read any further.  She had re-discovered the moment she was looking for.  She could now die in peace.

I also have early memories of grace as a child and I would like to share with you one event that happened when I was nine or ten years old.  I recall as vividly as today when it happened.  It was early one spring morning after a good night’s sleep. I got up out of bed.  No one was around.  My parents were about their chores, and my other brothers and sisters were either off doing chores or still sleeping.  I stepped out the front door onto the door step of our farm house where I lived.  My mind was still quiet from my sleep.   I then experienced a moment of clarity, of awareness, that remains stamped in my memory today.  The spring air was very still, and contained a refreshing warmth and fragrance.  I could hear the running of the water in the near-by stream that was swelled by spring rains.   The swallows were flying around the barns and I could hear the flapping of their wings.  For several seconds that seemed much longer, I experienced being suspended in a harmony, a peace, an inner contentment and joy with everything around me.  For those few seconds, it was as if time stopped. And I experienced within myself a moment of joy and peacefulness, but not about any particular thing.  Beyond the beauty of what I saw and heard and felt, there was something more that cannot be named; something ineffable, something deep, inner, holy.  It was a graced moment that still remains vivid in my mind today.  It was a gift.