Sometime during the mid-eighteenth century, a Jesuit priest in France named Jean-Pierre de Caussade wrote a book that is sometimes called Abandonment to Divine Providence but is more popularly known in English as The Sacrament of the Present Moment. I’m going to begin this post with a quotation from that book, because its vision of the place of grace within human interconnectedness is astounding and deeply moving to me. Writing of transformed souls, Caussade said:

Everything in these solitary souls speaks to us of God. God gives their silence, quiet, oblivion and isolation, their speech and their actions a certain virtue, which, unknown to themselves, affects others. And, just as they themselves are guided by the chance actions of innumerable creatures that are unwittingly influenced by the grace of God, they, too, guide and sustain many souls with whom they have no connection and no commitment to do so. It is God acting in unexpected and often mysterious ways.

Often, when I think of interconnectedness, it is through a moral lens. I get angry at negligence and selfishness, because I think that it stems from an inability to catch glimpses of the world as its seen through God’s eyes. When I am negligent or selfish, it’s because I am willfully closing myself off from God, refusing to see the great need and hope that is present within creation at every moment in time. God, of course, can see everything, and knows our deep sorrow and deep longing. A truly Christian moral life is one in which we try to align ourselves to the divine compassion that accompanies this seeing and knowing, and then act from it as we try to alleviate suffering and care for others.

But de Caussade is expressing something different. He is saying that interconnectedness is as affected by our being as it is by our actions, that we both give grace through our very persons, and are the recipients of the profound grace given by “the chance actions of innumerable creatures.” Without knowing it, we abide in an environment of grace. Without knowing it, we contribute to that environment.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with the end of Acts, and the apostle Paul? This is my final post, my final word on Luke and Acts during the Big Read, and I find myself wanting to focus, one last time, on the transformed soul. Is Paul a transformed soul? I think that he is. That doesn’t mean that he’s free of the small self. But for the most part, maybe most particularly in quiet moments, he is part of grace’s weather system. On the ship at sea, he remains calm and compassionate, and in small ways the grace he gives sees them through the storm. When the snake bites him, he reacts quietly and without fear. And he ends his story in quietude, sitting in a prison cell, teaching and blessing the people who come to see him.

We are attracted to the dramatic, so the end of Acts can feel like an anticlimax. But I’m glad that we don’t hear the story of Paul’s execution. We are left with an image of peace, rather than an image of struggle. He is no longer arguing in synagogues or being chased around cities by angry mobs. He isn’t standing out in any particular way – the Roman Jews haven’t even heard of him. The end of his story is, indeed, unexpected. But he ends in a state of grace, visited by a few people, teaching gently, no longer a storm in himself, but a mere particulate in the atmosphere of grace, a drop of water in the sea, a spark rising from the fire. He ends like one of de Caussade’s simple souls, who “guide and sustain many souls with whom they have no connection and no commitment to do so.” There is no better ending for Luke’s story.

 

I was sitting with other clergy in a Bible Study, and we were arguing about this passage.  After awhile I became indifferent to the argument, and began to think about the dishonest wealth that I had received in my life.  I took out a sketch book and wrote this poem for my wife:

Eternal Habitations

You are my dishonest wealth.
Close-faced when I met you,
we walked on snow as dry as sand.
I talked about North Africa.
I was so exotic.  You were very quiet.

Later we walked on grass.
I sang “My Funny Valentine” to you.
It was so exotic, this wealth of love.
I was still only half myself.
I lied and said, “I’m this, and this.”
Truth grew thin so I could replace it.

Years later she walked on grass,
our daughter, in blue overalls.
It was so exotic, the sunlight in her hair.
I was aware of how my pretense had allowed
our movement to a house, her birth,
our happiness the gift of how
I’d preened and postured –
on snow, dry as a desert,
on grass, with song, and all along,
we slowly saw through to each other.

I don’t deserve my wife’s love, and she doesn’t deserve mine.  We were so unformed when we met that we could only be dishonest.  We had no truth to tell, yet. We created the truth of ourselves together, the truth of who we were as individuals and the truth of who we are as a couple.   Our love for each other was a kind of grace – more than we deserved, but always there, and always shaping us. Because of our love, I understand the kind of dishonest wealth that Jesus is talking about.  I’ve been the recipient of it.

The wealth we receive from God is always dishonest.  We can do nothing to merit it, we can only accept it.  Once we’ve received it, we need to be faithful with it.  We need to cosset it and protect it and be grateful for it.  This is why Jesus’ seemingly random statement about divorce at the end of this passage makes sense to me.  If I know this dishonest wealth through my marriage, then I need to protect my marriage, to treat it as precious.  And this is true of any of the great, gifted loves. Not everyone is meant for marriage, and not every marriage is a form of dishonest wealth.  Sometimes they’re just dishonest. But when one receives the gift of love, from whatever source, one must be faithful to it. True riches, the riches that only God can give, will follow.