“God's grace is an encounter, and it is an encounter of love”. Adrien Candiard op
The latest literary work by the French Dominican friar Adrien Candiard, prior of the Dominican community in Cairo, engaged in dialogue with Islam in Egypt, has just been translated into Italian. After a number of successful texts on spirituality, Candiard reflects on the theme of grace in this latest slim volume.
While the French title presents the book more poetically with the expression “On the mountain. Roughness and grace” (Sur la montagne. L'aspérité et la grâce), the Italian title perhaps immediately points to the gist of the matter with the title “Grace is an encounter. If God loves for free, why commandments?” (page numbers are from the Italian edition). The book's central theme is grace and the response we are called to give in our choices.
Grace and Kingdom at the Heart of the Gospels
The author begins by pointing out how grace held a central position in the theological debates in the West from St Augustine in the 5th century to Henri de Lubac in the last century. However, grace seems somewhat sidelined in contemporary theological discourse today. According to Candiard, this fact is at the root of many misunderstandings of the Christian message.
The French friar takes the traditional definition of grace as "that which is given for free"(gratia, id est gratis data) and juxtaposes it with the numerous biblical references to the Kingdom of God. Just as grace is free by definition, so too Jesus presents the Kingdom in the parables as a gift offered to all indiscriminately.
Candiard focuses on the parable of the wedding banquet, where the host, in the end, invites all sorts of people without any distinction; among them, however, one is found without a wedding garment and is, therefore, thrown out of the banquet.
The author explains that in ancient times, the wedding dress was given to the guests by the hosts themselves. Therefore, the real fault of this character in the parable is not that he did not have certain personal merits to enter the banquet but that he did not allow himself to receive the wedding garment. In other words, the real fault is not allowing oneself to be loved.
Candiard parallels this passage with Peter's initial refusal to have his feet washed by Jesus at the Last Supper. On that occasion, Jesus replied to the fiery (and stubborn!) disciple that he would have had no part with him if he had not washed his feet.
Hence, the author concludes that 'too often we believe that God's justice is too difficult; instead, it is precisely his love for us that we struggle to accept' (p. 43). Letting ourselves be loved is the secret of the encounter between our freedom and God's grace.
Why the Commandments?
The author also addresses how to reconcile God's gratuitous love with the need to respect the demands of the Gospel, as well expressed by the Italian subtitle: If God loves for free, why the commandments? The author's answer is based on the primacy of conscience, a vision that has always been at the centre of Christian thought, for example, in the thinking of Thomas Aquinas.
The author highlights how the New Law of the Sermon on the Mount is more demanding than the Law of Moses in many respects; however, it also presents a significant difference in substance. Jesus says that he fulfils the Old Law, which means that his commandments function differently than the Ten Commandments.
Whereas the Old Law contains specific commandments for specific situations, the Law of the Sermon on the Mount consists mostly of anecdotes and even hyperbolic images that are not always to be taken literally but rather are meant to point us in a radical direction toward love. These general precepts, which are not meant to establish a detailed case, are then to be applied to real life and ultimately interpreted by our conscience.
Conscience must be formed and draw light from these precepts, rejecting any moral relativism. The commandments, therefore, remain fundamental, but not as a way to merit God's love, which is always free grace, but as a sure direction to remain faithful to His love in all our actions.
Only by accepting God's free love can we follow his commandment to love one another as he has loved us. Candiard emphasises the fact that the word "as" in this commandment of John's Gospel (John 15:12) does not mean an impossible imitation for us of Jesus' divine love, but it "actually indicates the origin: love one another with the love with which I have loved you, with the love that I, Jesus, give you, with the love with which I love you. [...] It is because you are loved that you can love" (p. 73).
On the Mountain to Encounter God
In the book's conclusion, Candiard tells the readers how reading the Sermon on the Mount as a teenager gave his life an entirely new direction. Instead of feeling intimidated by the demanding instructions Jesus gives in the chapters of Matthew's Gospel, young Adrien found a new spiritual momentum to direct his future. He says: 'I did not know, perhaps, what he was telling me, but I knew I could trust him' (p. 105).
In reading this personal anecdote, I could not help but be reminded of a similar experience I had as a teenager when I first read the Gospels in full. I remember doing it with an app on my phone, almost with that fear and concealment characterising certain youthful loves. Of all those passages, the Sermon on the Mount touched my heart the most, and for days and weeks, it seemed to bounce around in my head.
The Sermon on the Mount teaches us that God loves us first and is with us on this journey of growth towards perfection like the Father. This perfection is not to be understood as an impossible effort on our part. As Candiard says, "The perfection of the Father that interests us is that of his love given to all men, just and unjust; it is his mercy, which is not conditioned by our gratitude" (p. 70).
What matters for those who encounter the Word of the Risen Lord in the Gospel is not being able to suddenly put Jesus' demanding commandments into practice but finding oneself surpassingly loved by Him. It is in feeling loved by Christ that we are also given the certain hope that one day, we too will be able to experience the true happiness that is only found in being able to love as He has loved us.