| The Hidden Life |
Chapter 4 |
Page 6 |
It is told of a saintly man that by his own request the only epitaph on his grave was the word “Kept.” We are all kept, we who do not fall away into the darkness of eternal death — we are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. Some people speak of the beginning of their Christian life, when they decide to follow Christ, as if that were all, as if the struggle were all over when the choice is made. We hear it said that certain persons are saved, as if the whole of being saved were accomplished in the one act of deciding to be a Christian. Really, however, the struggle only begins with the conversion, ending only when the life reaches glory.
Some speak, too, as if all Christ’s work in saving us had been done on the cross nineteen hundred years ago, in his giving up of himself for us. But his actual work in saving us is done with us, and in us, one by one, in teaching us life’s lessons, giving us grace to overcome in temptation, lifting us up when we have fallen, going after us and bringing us back when we have wandered away, and keeping us from the world’s deadly evils. Were it not for this patient, never-failing, watchful love of Christ, not one of us would ever be saved.
It is Christ’s perfect knowledge of us that gives such infinite patience to his love and grace. He knows the sincerity that is in us; he sees, too, the possibilities of good that are in us — not what we are now, but what we are to be when the work in us is finished.
There is a word of St. John’s which says, “We shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” This is a vision of the final outcome of Christ’s work in saving us. The mother of the artist saw in her boy’s childish attempts, fore gleams of genius, and kissed him to encourage him. That kiss made him an artist. So the patient, loving Christ sees in our poor living, in our yearnings, our human discontents, our strivings, our hungers, our longings, gleams of what we may become; and it is to bring out these possibilities that he deals with us in such grace and gentleness.
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