Nature and Grace | Bishop Barron

I want to talk to you about nature and grace, which is one of the thorniest and most interesting issues in theology. And I'll do it by referring back to St. John the Baptist. Remember the famous scene when people come to the Baptist and say, what should we do? Tell us what to do. And so John the Baptist, in line with his prophetic tradition, says, well here are some things you can do. So you soldiers who are acting like bully boys and extorting people, stop doing that. Don't demand money from people. Or the tax collectors, who are skimming money off the top and threatening and all that, stop doing that. In other words, and he says, if you've got two shirts, give one to a guy with no shirt. He urges upon them the great works of justice. And here, as I say, he's in line with his prophetic forebears. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, Daniel, and the whole gang would urge Israel to justice. He's also in line, I would say, with the great philosophers. Go back to Cicero and Plato and Aristotle. Plato says to be just is to render to each his due. Good pithy definition. Do the right thing, we would say. Be virtuous. Be upright. Do things that you can do on your own steam. Even go up to Thomas Jefferson. They would all agree with that. They all agree that there are certain actions that are just that we should do to make our lives better. So far, I would say, so natural. Remember, nature agrees. But then the Baptist says something, I think if we really move into it, we'll take our breath away. But there's one mightier than I who's coming, and I'm not even worthy to untie the strap of sin. First of all, our antennae should go up. It would be impossible to imagine Plato, as much as he respected Aristotle, would ever say, oh, this guy, this Aristotle, is coming. I'm not worthy to take his shoes off. Come on, he'd never say that. Or even you couldn't imagine Isaiah saying of Jeremiah, oh, this Jeremiah fellow is coming. I'm not even worthy. No, I'm sure I respect them, and they're in the same tradition I'm in. But they wouldn't say that. Or Jefferson, oh, this Hamilton guy, I'm not even worthy to take his shoe off. No, they would recognize the legitimacy of those who followed them in this natural tradition of social justice. But John the Baptist is not saying that. He's saying, the one coming after me is so different that I'm not even worthy to do a slave's work for him, taking your sandals off. The one who's coming after me is qualitatively different than I am. That's the point he's making. We're moving beyond, I would say here, the merely natural. We're moving beyond the realm of the natural, which is what we can achieve on our own, by our own forces. Now, notice what he says further about this one who's coming. He says, I'm baptizing you in water. Like, anyone can do that. But the one who's coming is going to baptize you in fire and in the Holy Spirit. And go back to the root meaning of baptize. Baptize in Greek means simply to dip in. So dip in water, you're baptized. But to baptize is to dip into. The one coming after me is going to dip you into the Holy Spirit. Notice, please, the shift from the active to passive. What should we do? Well, do this, do that. You can do active things. But the one who's coming is not going to ask so much for activity on our part. It's a passive stance. He's going to dip you in the Holy Spirit and fire. What's the Holy Spirit? Spiritus Sanctus, holy breath. It's the breath exchange between the Father and the Son. It's the shared love of the Father and the Son. The one who's coming is going to dip you into that love so you can be transformed in it. It's not something you can do. It's something that can only be done to you by the one who's coming. Now, and the second image as well is making the same point. He's got his winnowing fan in his hand. We're going to miss what that means, but ancient people knew. The winnowing fan was like a rake or a fork. And the farmer would put the stalks of wheat on the threshing floor, which is this flat surface. And then he would take the winnowing fan and he'd throw it up in the air, and the wind would blow the chaff away, and then the heavier wheat would remain. It's how they separated wheat from chaff. Now, could you say, oh, put me in a self-help program so I can separate out what's good and bad in me? That's not what he's saying. He's saying the one who's coming, who's qualitatively different than I am, is going to do something to you. First, he's going to baptize you. He's going to dip you into the Holy Spirit so that the love that God is can begin to take hold in you. And then he is going to affect this change. He's going to take his winnowing fan, which would hurt, by the way. I imagine if you hear something like the wheat being tossed in the air and things being blown away, that's not easy. He's doing the work. What does it mean now to be truly holy, to be a saint? Part of it is indeed justice. None of us is gainsaying what John said or what Isaiah, Jeremiah, Thomas Jefferson, Cicero, all that's fine. That's part of it, what we can do. But then there's this far, far more important thing that we can't do. It's allowing Christ to live his life in us, to effect a change in us, to let him take over. I've talked before about Jesus getting in the boat of St. Peter and then giving orders. It's not like Peter asked him to get in the boat. It's not like, hey, help me with my fishing here. It's Jesus gets in the boat and then starts giving commands. And that's when Peter truly comes to life. Or it's the Lord going to Zacchaeus and saying, this day, Zacchaeus, I'm staying in your house. House there means his soul. It means his self. Jesus is, I'm coming in and I'm directing operations now. See, that's what it means to be a saint. And it's really, really hard for us to get that, I think, in our culture, which is very much geared to self-assertion, to self-help, to I can do it, the independent person. The saint, you might say by definition, is a non-independent person. The saint is someone who has surrendered her life to someone else, has given his life over to a higher power. Look at the 12 step again. Surrendering to a higher power is essential to transformation. The true addict who says, finally, look, I can't do this. That's a key moment. And I turn my life, I become passive before this higher power. So in the spiritual order, so in the spiritual order, I become passive before the one now who lives his life in me. Well, what does all this look like on the ground? And what is its cash value as William Jameson said? Well, I would use the language of love here. If love is truly willing the good of the other as other, it's not something we can do on our own. Look back at the great philosophers. They'll talk about generosity or magnanimity, sort of certain condescension toward those with less than you. But they don't talk about love, real love, which is a complete abandonment of your own program and project. It's recentering your life so that the other is more important than you. That I would say is something properly divine. And so it comes only as a gift. Now look at the great saints. Look at a Mother Teresa going into the worst slums in the world. Now look at Rose Hawthorne, who would literally invite into her home people that had been kicked out of hospitals because they were dying of cancer. Now look at Junipero Serra, recently canonized, who went at mid-career, at midlife, when he was pretty comfortable doing good works, but went to the ends of the world. I just visited his tomb out in Carmel. Went to the end of the world, like going to the moon today, and abandoned his life, his family, knew he'd never see them again. He never did. How do you explain that? I mean, you can't explain those things on Aristotelian grounds. You can't. You can't explain them on the classical philosophical ground. You can't even explain them on prophetic grounds. Like, boy, that person's following what Isaiah said. Something happened. Someone came into their lives with a winnowing fan and cleared out what he had to clear out, and then he dipped them into the Holy Spirit and then sent them. There's Christianity. That's Christianity. One of the problems today is we turn Christianity into a self-help program. Follow these steps and you'll know. Christianity is allowing Christ to live his life in you, surrendering to him, doing what he commands, letting him throw the wheat and chaff so that the chaff is borne away. That's what it means to be holy, and that's why the distinction between nature and grace remains of enormous importance.