The Centurion’s right idea


When God wishes to save a soul, at whatever time and at what ever place, the undoubted effect follows the Will of God.

When God wishes to save a soul and touches it with the interior hand of His grace, no human will resists Him.

Howsoever remote from salvation an obstinate sinner is, when Jesus presents Himself to be seen by him in the salutary light of His grace, the sinner is forced to surrender himself, to have recourse to Him, and to humble himself, and to adore his Savior.

When God accompanies His commandment and His eternal exhortation by the unction of His Spirit and by the interior force of His grace, He works that obedience in the heart that He is seeking.

There are no attractions that do not yield to the attractions of grace, because nothing resists the Almighty.

Grace is that voice of the Father which teaches men interiorly and makes them come to Jesus Christ; whoever does not come to Him, after he has heard the exterior voice of the Son, is in no wise taught by the Father.

The seed of the word, which the hand of God nourishes, always brings forth its fruit.

The grace of God is nothing else than His omnipotent Will; this is the idea that God Himself gives us in all His Scriptures.

The true idea of grace is that God wishes Himself to be obeyed by us and He is obeyed; He commands, and all things are done; He speaks as the Lord, and all things are obedient to Him.

The grace of Jesus Christ is a strong, powerful, supreme, invincible grace, that is, the operation of the omnipotent Will, the consequence and imitation of the operation of God causing the incarnation and the resurrection of His Son.

The harmony of the all powerful operation of God in the heart of man with the free consent of mans will is demonstrated, therefore, to us in the Incarnation, as in the fount and archetype of all other operations of mercy and grace, all of which are as gratuitous and as dependent on God as the original operation itself.

God Himself has taught us the idea of the omnipotent working of His grace, signifying it by that operation which produces creatures from nothing and which restores life to the dead.

The right idea which the centurion had about the omnipotence of God and of Jesus Christ in healing bodies by a single act of His will, [MT 8:8] is an image of the idea we should have about the omnipotence of His grace in healing souls from cupidity.

God illumines the soul, and heals it, as well as the body, by His will only; He gives orders and He is obeyed.

No graces are granted except through faith.

Faith is the first grace and the source of all others.