A Manly Grace

Highway 74 west of Waxhaw is our main link to the outside world. It's just four miles long, stretching from Highway 521 to downtown Waxhaw, parallel to the railroad tracks. It is, for the most part, a barren stretch, except for an occasional old house or trailer. Otherwise it's mostly woods and kudzu.


I was surprised then to see a sign for a new church go up on this lonely stretch of road. I was even more surprised to see it on the north side in a kudzu patch, slap up against the railroad tracks. I cannot imagine how they will manage to build a church there.

The sight said "Future site of Our Lady of Grace Catholic church."

The sign of a new Catholic church coming to our neighborhood fills me with--well actually it doesn't fill me with much of anything. Not being a Catholic, I don't much care where the put a church. They can put one on he moon, if they want to. It's their right, I guess.

The name fascinated me. "Our Lady of Grace." I presume by "lady" they meant the Virgin Mary. It is unlikely that they would build a church and dedicate it to someone else. To my Protestant ears, naming a church "our Lady" seems a little weird.

But the last word "Grace." Is one I am very familiar with. It's a good Protestant word. Grace, as we are fond of saying is God's Riches at Christ's Expense. Grace is a free gift a donation to us as charity, instituted by Christ on the Cross and given upon asking to anyone who will believe.

But it puzzled me to read the sign. I know that Catholics are particularly fond of the Virgin Mary, but still why would we associate with Mom that which seems rightfully associated with the Son? After all, we don't refer to the "Obama's Mom's Administration." We don't celebrate "Columbus' Mother's Day."

This is not to take anything away from Mary at all. It's just a question. Since Catholics believe as we do that it is Jesus, not Mary who really saves us, why do they say "Hail Mary, full or Grace?"

I don’t' think the reason for it is spiritual. I think it has to do with our emotions. We tend to associate grace with women more than men. When we skinned our knee as children, who was it who bandaged us up, kissed our forehead and gave us a cup of hot cocoa? It was mom. Our dads were yelling at us go get back in there and finish the game. We look to Dads for inspiration. We look to mothers for grace and hot cocoa. That's probably why Mother's Day is bigger than Father's Day. Mom's are just cooler, that's all.

In our society grace has become (I think) a feminine Ideal. Women are gentle an graceful. Men are tough and forceful. Grace is gentle. Men are proud. We men tend to leave grace to the women folk, as we go out with our guns to blow holes in cute little animals. Leave the grace to the women.

But God didn't see it that way. Our Savior was male on purpose. Again, not to take anything away from Mary, but God chose to come to earth in male form, not female.

Christ came to offer us, not just grace and forgiveness, but a manly grace and a manly forgiveness. I'm not saying the sexes are not equal. Both sexes need this forgiveness equally, to be sure. But it's just that the kind of grace that God offered us is a grace born of blood and suffering. It is a grace that came from facing the worst that people could dish out, and to throw back forgiveness into their raging faces. In order to give us God's grace, he had to bleed like a soldier in the height of battle. He had to bear a burden that would make Atlas shrug. He had to stand before kings and governors and speak truth boldly to power. In short he had to stand up like a man.

Come to think of it, women also know what suffering is like. What man could bear the pain of child-bearing? What man could bleed and groan, and through that suffering bring new life into the world? There is a reason that God made women more able to bear pain than men--because they had to.

God was no wimp when it comes to grace. Grace is never soft, not when it was given to us on the cross, nor when we give it out to the persecuting world. It is still God's riches at our expense. It is still a forgiveness born of blood and pain.

Maybe I'm just being picky about word, but then that's what theologians do. Grace did not begin with our lady. It began with a suffering Father looking down on his dying Son, and pronouncing it good, a necessary sacrifice for the sin of the world. No one on earth, man or woman, can fully grasp the enormity of this sacrifice.