Sanctifying grace is not meant to remain static in the soul. just as our natural life waxes stronger with the years, from infancy and childhood on to youth and full maturity, so the divine life is intended to gather strength as the hours and days move on. Grace is like a seed that is sown in order to sink into the soil and bring forth fruit. It resembles the first flicker of light at early dawn that will later blaze into the full splendor of the noonday sun.
Now, just as in the natural life there is a certain definite span, determined upon by God, so in the supernatural life of grace there is a development beyond which the soul may not go. Thus God decrees that one man will have seventy years of natural life and that another will die in infancy. Why this should be it is not for us to question. In a somewhat analogous manner God determines that one soul shall grow in grace till it reaches the stature of a Paul or a Xavier, and permit that another will languish, supernaturally, holding on very tenuously to its gift, frequently losing it, and barely recovering it before death.
Grace, then, is given "according to the measure of the giving of Christ." Every person who grows in grace up to the height planned by God is a success in His eyes. Such a person may lag, on the road to sanctity, far behind the canonized or the canonizable, but he should not envy them. For him to try to emulate their virtues and attain to their stature would be presumption, for the simple reason that he would be attempting a feat for which he was not equipped.
But, having granted that much, it must immediately be added that the commoner mistake, by far, is, not to run ahead of God's grace, but to fail to correspond with it. "There are very few souls," wrote St. Ignatius, "none perhaps, who realize how much they thwart God when He wants to act in them, and how much He would accomplish in them, if they allowed Him."
Since grace is a sharing in God's life, it is clear that it can come only from God. If the soul is to receive it, this can be brought about only through union with God. This is just what Our Lord insists upon in His parable of the vine and the branches. He is God, the Vine, and the streams of divine life will flow from Him into us, the branches, if, and only if, contact between Him and us is brought about and maintained.
This is why holiness and union with Christ are synonymous. Holiness does not consist in long prayers or penances or apostolic works. True, it often expresses its healthy condition by such means and if it failed to do so it would be suspect. But sanctity consists in the possession of sanctifying grace, and growth in sanctity is to be measured by growth in grace.
When Our Lord moved in and out amongst men, there were occasions when they touched Him and "virtue went out from Him" to heal them or restore them to life. We can touch Him too. Each time we receive a Sacrament worthily we make contact with Him and grace flows into our souls. By His life and death He has merited infinite treasures of grace; the Sacraments give us access to this treasurehouse. As He will explain to me in another meditation, the greatest of the Sacraments is the Blessed Eucharist, in which we receive, not merely grace, but the very source and fountainhead of all grace, Jesus Christ Himself.
If you pour water into a sponge, the sponge will readily absorb the water. If you pour it on a hard rock, the rock cannot absorb it, and it flows away. Christ approaches some souls with His grace and they are in a state of receptivity; the dispositions they bring to the Sacraments enable Him to give them graces which He must withhold from others.
If these magnificent truths were deeper realities to me, how my spiritual life would expand its horizon! Lord, I come here today to reflect on what I believe, that, through Your action and my cooperation, I may appreciate Your gift of grace and make it the one aim of my life to grow in grace each day.