If in the planning that awaits us we commit ourselves more confidently to a pastoral activity that gives personal and communal prayer its proper place, we shall be observing an essential principle of the Christian view of life: the primacy of grace. There is a temptation that perennially besets every spiritual journey and pastoral work: that of thinking that the results depend on our ability to act and to plan. God of course asks us really to invest all our resources of intelligence and energy in serving the cause of the Kingdom. But it is fatal to forget that "without Christ we can do nothing." (Jn 15:5)
(Novo Millennio Ineunte 38)
3rd Week of Advent
The Primacy of Grace (I)
Sunday December 14, 2025 - Marcel Dion
One of the qualities I admire in Linda is how very careful she is in her choice of words. She is like that because, as she has often reminded me, words matter, they have meaning, and so the meaning of words matters! All of creation came into being through the word that God spoke! (Gen 1:2) And Jesus Himself is the word made flesh! No doubt Jesus chose His words carefully when He spoke and I think St John Paul II also chose his words carefully when he taught. I think the meaning of the words in the quote above hugely significant.
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As I was reflecting on this quote certain words began to almost jump out at me (they are listed below), and I was struck by how significant and how important those six words were. So I began to search their dictionary definition hoping that this would help me better appreciate what each of these words means in the context of this quote. Since the dictionary definition of a word includes several synonyms, my search resulted in creating a kind of amplified version of this quote. What follows are the six words and their synonyms. I found that re-reading this quote and including the synonyms of what seems to me to be the most important words in that quote is a very fruitful way to better appreciate what St John Paul means by the Primacy of Grace… So into the deep we go!
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ESSENTIAL: crucial, necessary, key, vital, indispensable, needed, required, called for, requisite, important, all important, vitally important, of the utmost importance, of great consequence, of the essence, critical, life and death, imperative, mandatory, compulsory, obligatory, compelling, urgent, pressing, burning, paramount, preeminent, high priority, significant, consequential.
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PRIMACY: priority, pre-eminence, pride of place, superiority, first place, supremacy, of greater importance.
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TEMPTATION: a desire, urge, impulse, inclination, element, enticement, seduction, attraction, draw, pull, snare, trap, appeal.
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PERENNIALLY: in a way that continues for a long or apparently infinite time.
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FATAL: disastrous, devastating, ruinous, calamitous, catastrophic, cataclysmic, destructive, grievous, dire, crippling, crushing, injurious, harmful, costly.
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NOTHING: means NOTHING, not a thing, not a single thing, nothing at all - not even a teeny, weeny bit!…zero, zilch, which is not very much!
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So what is the challenge for us? Is it not to commit ourselves more confidently to giving personal and communal prayer its proper place? This means of course that daily personal, as well as regular communal prayer, must be a priority for us. By doing so, not only will we more readily recall that "without Christ we can do nothing", but Linda and I believe that trusting in the primacy of grace, we'll also begin to truly believe that with Christ "we can do anything" for "everything is possible for one who believes" (Mark 9:23).