SPIRITUAL LIFE COMMITTEE

Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity

Monthly Reflection for August 2002

Participating in Grace: Lessons from Father Judge

Pat Regan, MCA
Divine Providence Cenacle, Maryland

A primary concern of any spirituality is how an individual can actively participate in grace. In an apostolic spirituality, there is a particular awareness that God dwells within the world. The Christian vocation is one of active participation in the world as a means of sharing divine life.

Discovering the will of God is a necessary first step of participating in grace. St. Vincent de Paul, the " spiritual grandfather" of the Cenacle, employed a highly inductive approach to discernment, in which he moves from a reflection about a particular experience before deciding on a specific action. Instead of beginning with a particular decision to be made and turning the attention inward (as in the discernment model of St. Ignatius of Loyola, for example), Vincent looks outward to a particular situation before coming to a decision based on the reality that he has viewed.

Father Judge was eminently Vincentian. As Dennis Berry, S.T. points out in God’s Valiant Warrior:

Father Thomas Judge was a man with multiple and sometimes conflicting obligations. Yet it seems that, for him, these various "events and necessities" were defining for him ever more clearly God’s Will. He did not begin with a particular theology of vision of ministry, e.g., the call of all the baptized to mission, and then deduce that all should be involved. Rather he experienced the need, interpreted the events and sought out a response.

Another clear Vincentian influence on Judge’s spiritual vision is his understanding of Divine Providence. "The circumstances of our daily life make manifest the Will of God, that is what is known as His Providence over us." At the heart of his vision for the Cenacle – particularly, but not exclusively, for the lay apostolate – is an understanding that God is calling each to be missionary in his or her given situation. He writes, "We will find the field of sanctity in the circumstances of our every day providence."

It is in his understanding of Divine Providence that Father Judge’s pneumatology – or theology of the Holy Spirit – displays itself most prominently. He recognizes the need to be in tune with the Holy Spirit daily:

We cannot hope to do anything for God except by His grace. It should be our daily hunger to try to obtain more and more of this grace. Now, how can we obtain more and more of the free bounty of God's? . . . By following His inspirations and being vigilantly on the watch for His impulses. Sometimes He speaks to us through others, through nature, through adversity, through a book, a good companion. Every attraction that would lead us to the Sacraments, every impulse that would cause us to wound our self-love or foolish pride manifests clearly the Holy Spirit in our soul.

It is the Holy Spirit, then, which serves as Father Judge’’s guide to discerning the will of God and the means of participating in grace. Father Judge understood the importance of his Cenacle members taking counsel with one another as a means of discovering the movement of the Holy Spirit. Writing in a 1911 letter, he recognized council as a gift to help "curb the impetuosity of our nature." In a 1923 letter, he writes: "I told you that the spirit of the Cenacle is an open spirit. I insisted on everything being done in council and with simplicity." And the original Constitution of the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity requires,

In Council, every member, in a spirit of simplicity and humility, shall freely and respectfully give views as asked on the matter proposed, with a holy indifference as to whether these be received or not.

Questions for reflection:

1. Reflect on a situation when you have tried to discover God's will about a situation. Does the inductive model used by Father Judge (and St. Vincent) resonate with your experience? How or how not?

2. How do you understand the idea of "Divine Providence?" How have you found the "field of sanctity" in the circumstances of your every day life?

3. How do you stay "in tune" with the Holy Spirit day to day? What aspects of the Cenacle spirituality help you in that regard?

4. What has been your experience of "taking counsel" within your Cenacle? Who (or what) helps you discover the movement of the Holy Spirit in your life?