by Effie Caldarola
Author Annie Dillard has a popular quote: “We catch grace like a person filling a tin cup at a waterfall.” That quote intrigued and troubled me. I stuck it on my bulletin board, next to pictures of my kids, prayers for the canonization of Boys’ Town founder Father Edward Flanagan and a picture of me with Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J. My bulletin board, in other words, holds for me a variety of reminders of grace.
As Catholics, we’re very big into the idea of water standing for grace. The first lines of Genesis establish our symbolic love affair with water: God’s spirit hovers over the water, representing the Lord moving to control the chaos.
Scripture abounds with water, and its ubiquitous presence should be our first hint that grace is everywhere. Jesus changes large vats of it into the finest wine and seeks out John at the Jordan River to be baptized in it. He offers the Samaritan woman living water, which only he can give. Water, like fire and wind, is grace’s gushing metaphor.
The best baptisms are those done by immersion, rather than in dribbles. During the Easter season, the pastor at my parish literally soaks people with branches full of water as he makes his way through the church.
So here I am, tin cup in hand. I’ve been carrying it around with me, in my imagination, wondering how stingy I am about asking for grace and how observant I am in recognizing grace when it’s pouring down on me.
In my job working for an anti-death penalty organization, I have been blessed to meet people who present me with grace if I’m willing to see it. One of them is a man named Curtis McCarty, who was held for nearly 20 years on death row in Oklahoma for a crime he did not commit.
Our criminal justice system is incredibly flawed, from top to bottom, with punishment and retribution taking the place of rehabilitation and reconciliation. And to make things worse, in many cases the verdict is just flat out wrong, or even the product of corruption, and Curtis was a victim of that.
Yet Curtis has overcome bitterness to emerge as a compelling speaker who tells audiences worldwide about his experiences. There’s grace in that.
Grace abounds, as well, in the women I’ve met who are faithful to husbands who have been imprisoned for decades, or mothers whose children, as juveniles, were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That kind of mandatory sentence for juveniles has been declared unconstitutional in my state now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a long struggle. How does one remain strong, loyal, faithful through that kind of trial? Grace, amazing grace.
God in All Things
In a document written for the Society of Jesus in 2008, the Jesuits express their way of seeing God in all things: “Our way of proceeding is to trace the footprints of God everywhere …”
I guess my dinky little tin cup just won’t cut it in a world where God’s grace is overflowing like a waterfall. If I can see the footprints of God in the robins flocking to my backyard these days, then I can say yes to grace everywhere.
Grace isn’t just in the time I set aside for formal prayer. It comes to me in the sacraments, but it gushes forth from there, demanding I flow with it. It calls to me. It asks me to throw away my tin cup and immerse myself.[hr] Effie Caldarola writes a syndicated column for Catholic News Service.