I DO NOT DESERVE TO HAVE YOU COME INTO MY HOUSE (LUKE 7,6)
The encounters, which God created to make us part of his kingdom, are a pure gift that we would not have been able even to imagine or forsee. These encounters show us the God's goodness and his loving care for each person. They are a deeply pure gift. They are "Grace".
The most objective value of our christian life is the awareness of the gratuitousness of God's interventions in our life.
Not only the encounter but also the capacity to understand.
God's calling is a gift of Grace.
"I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and wise and reavealing them to the simple... Yes, Father, such was thy choice" (Matthew 11,25).
The same capacity to verify God’s call, to recognize its value, is a gift of Grace.
And the capacity to adhere to and fulfill the Christian proposal is also a gift of Grace.
"As a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself, but must remain part of the vine, neither can you unless remain in me. I am the vine, you are the brances. Whoever remains in me and I in him bears fruit in plenty; for cut off from me you can do nothing".(John 15,3-5)
At this point we can understand what constitutes the expression of a true availability and commitment to the Christian calling: it is the attitude of pleading, of prayer.
The most elementary aspect of our natural religiosity is the sense of our own original dependence. It disposes the simple soul to acknowledge that the ultimate attitude to assume is the humble attitude of prayer.
This attitude of prayer is so fundamental that it belongs as much to those who do not as yet believe as to believers.
Fr. Cipriano Bontacchio