I believe....

To be human is to be graced, the recipient of God's offer of Himself .

(Harvey Egan: Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life)

 

For Karl Rahner, who has been called the greatest theologian of the 20th century, the most central question for a person -- and for our world-- is this: How is an authentic experience of God possible?  How can I experience what God wants to communicate to me about Himself in an absolute and irreversible way?

 

The reason Rahner devoted his life to teaching theology was, as he said just before he died, "I was convinced that I experienced God directly, and I wish to communicate this experience to others, as well as I can...I have experienced God himself, not human words about him...This experience is truly grace...essentially refused to no one.  One thing remains certain: God can and will deal directly with his creature" (ibid, p. 33).

 

Once a person has experienced the presence of God, according to Rahner, no human argument--whether philosophical, theological, or existential-- has any power to separate or sway him from the grace he has received, or from what God has revealed of himself.  This experience is at the heart of all human existence, and it changes one's life forever!

 

Down through the ages, from the beginning of recorded history, we have the testimony of men and women in every age and time who have experienced this moment of grace -- when they knew beyond all doubt the presence and the love of God.  Abraham, Moses, the prophets, the Jewish people all the way to the New Testament --- and then John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and all the saints down to our time have this one thing in common:  grace, the self-communication of God to the human soul.

 

Here is how Elizabeth of the Trinity expressed it:  "We carry our heaven within ourselves, because he who satisfies the saints with the light of vision gives himself to us in faith and in mystery.  It's the same thing.  I feel I have found heaven on earth, because heaven is God and God is in my soul.  The day I understood this, a light went on inside me, and I want to whisper this secret to all I love, so that they too, in whatever circumstances, will cling increasingly to God" (1906).

 

Her words remarkably echo those of Karl Rahner -- and of all those whose experience of God's revelation has been recorded, from the beginning to the end of time.  There is a strange and wonderful consistency and unity of expression in those who have experienced grace -- though they have all experienced it in different ways.  Their experience -- and our experience -- is the grounded truth of Jesus' words:  Be not afraid...I am with you always, even unto the consummation of the world!