Gravity & Grace: Our Ascent To God

A Homily For All Saints – St. Joseph Catholic Church, Chehalis
We know gravity’s pull: everything falls. Left on its own, everything moves down. There is also a kind of spiritual gravity at work in the human heart and in the world around us. It pulls us downward:
• from humility toward pride,
• from mercy toward resentment,
• from purity of heart toward divided loyalties,
• from peacemaking toward conflict,
• from hunger for righteousness toward complacency,
• from trust in God toward self-reliance.
But there is another power at work: grace. Grace does not merely tell us to try harder. Grace is the life of Christ at work within us. If gravity pulls us toward ourselves, grace draws us toward God. Grace lifts the human heart.
Psalm 24 gives us the question: Who can climb? “Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD? or who may stand in his holy place?”
Holiness is an ascent. But anyone who has climbed a mountain knows that gravity makes every upward step costly. The higher we climb, the more effort it requires.
Spiritually, we experience the same thing. It is easier to retaliate than forgive. Easier to judge than show mercy. Easier to protect ourselves than make peace. Easier to accumulate than become poor in spirit.
Psalm 24 says the one who ascends has “hands that are sinless, whose heart is clean.” Jesus teaches: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.” The saints are those who allowed grace to purify their hearts and keep drawing them upward.
Our world’s gravity says:
Protect yourself. Jesus says: Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Make sure you come out on top. Jesus says: Blessed are the meek.
Look after yourself first. Jesus says: Blessed are the merciful.
Avoid suffering at all costs. Jesus says: Blessed are they who mourn.
Win the argument. Defeat the opposition. Jesus says: Blessed are the peacemakers.
The Beatitudes are therefore not simply a list of Christian virtues. They describe a life being drawn toward God. The Beatitudes reveal what a human life looks like when grace becomes stronger than gravity.
It is important to realize that we do not climb the mountain of holiness by sheer determination.
Christ comes down in order to lift us up. Jesus, the eternal Son descends into our humanity. He enters our poverty, suffering, sin, and death. And through the Cross and Resurrection, he opens the path upward to the Father.
Note the opening of the Sermon on the Mount: “When he saw the crowds, Jesus went up the mountain…” Jesus ascends the mountain, and the disciples come to him. The Christian life is ultimately following Christ up the mountain.
The saints did not get to heaven because they somehow escaped the laws governing the rest of humanity. They experienced the same temptations, disappointments, wounds, failures, and struggles that we do. The difference is that they surrendered themselves to grace.
In the Book of Revelation, John sees a vision of our ultimate destination: “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.” This is where the ascent ends: before the throne and before the Lamb.
Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord? Revelation answers: Look! A multitude no one can count.
Holiness is not reserved for a spiritual elite. The multitude is enormous. And perhaps even more importantly, they come from everywhere. Every nation. Every race. Every people. Every tongue.
The Church does not celebrate All Saints merely to admire extraordinary Christians of the past. We celebrate them because their destiny is meant to be ours.
A saint is someone in whom we can see what grace can do with a human life. Francis of Assisi shows us what grace can do with possessions. Thérèse of Lisieux shows us what grace can do with ordinary life. Mother Teresa shows us what grace can do with mercy. Maximilian Kolbe shows us what grace can do with self-sacrificial love.
But this Solemnity of All Saints deliberately takes us beyond the saints whose names we know. There are mothers and fathers, grandparents, religious, bishops, priests, teachers, laborers, immigrants, children, caregivers, neighbors and friends whose holiness never became famous. God knows their names.
“Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD?” The saints give us the answer: our vocation lies in the truth that we were made for God. The Beatitudes gives us our path: “Blessed are the poor in spirit… the merciful… the clean of heart… the peacemakers…” This is how the children of God live while making the journey. And we must always keep the destination in mind.
Perhaps holiness begins by asking: What is pulling my heart downward right now?
Is it resentment? Fear? Pride? Discouragement? Possessions? A grudge I refuse to surrender? The need to be right? The inability to forgive?
Equally important: Where is Christ inviting me upward? Toward mercy? Toward reconciliation? Toward humility? Toward generosity? Toward peacemaking? Toward purity of heart?
The Beatitudes are not simply ideals to admire but invitations to cooperate with grace today. The saints were not people who lived without gravity. They knew its pull just as we do. They knew temptation, sorrow, disappointment, weakness and sin.
But they discovered something stronger than gravity. They discovered grace. They allowed Christ to lift them beyond themselves: from pride to humility, from resentment to mercy. So, my friends, let us continue to deny the gravity of this world by the grace of Christ. Let us continue our journey of holiness, ascending the mountain of the Lord until we reach its summit and join the saints of God in the eternal banquet of heaven.