"Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God" - Karl Rahner
I
am a teacher in a Baltimore City School, and my students and teaching practice
are my ministry. All my students are products of very difficult surroundings:
poverty, violence, substance abuse, homelessness, abandonment, broken
relationships, disenfranchisement from society and racism. In their daily
lives, my students face more hardships than most other Americans face in their
lifetime. My students did not choose to be brought into this world, they did
not choose their parents, they did not choose their race, they did not choose
their neighborhood community, they did not choose their economic status. Yet
while they did not choose any of these factors, these factors deeply form a
sense of their world and a sense of who God is for them. Because of these factors,
most of my students have developed the understanding that God is rarely present
in their lives and that he decides to show up only occasionally. This article addresses how my students understand grace, and more importantly, how they
experience grace in their lives. This article will propose a way to invite and
facilitate my students’ experience of grace through an understanding and
experience of Karl Rahner’s theology on grace.
My
initial approach to understanding my students’ experiences was formed by my
Catholic upbringing. I understood grace as being close to God, as living a life
full of faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines grace as “favour, the free and undeserved
help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God,
adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life” (1996).
Through this understanding, I initially found grace to be absent from my
students’ lives because I focused on the social sins in which they found
themselves. Before, I experienced a detrimental type of empathy
towards my students, a sense of constant sorrow and defeat. This type of
empathy defined our relationships. Because of this initial response, I was
becoming disillusioned by any type of real change that was possible in my
students’ lives.
Throughout
my time as a teacher, my response shifted to become one that was more
proactive and less despairing. After the numbness I experienced when I focused
on the social sins surrounding their lives, I focused on trying to re-integrate
them into the world in our short-lived classroom encounters. I realized that my
students needed to be reintegrated into society and to rebuild the human skills
they were deprived of in many ways. Social sins in many ways had fractured
their lives, even their own personhood, and I was a mediator and facilitator
for them to believe in choices again and the individual impact they have in
their own lives. My classroom became the tool to practice this form of
reconciliation and a place where they would always feel welcome.
My
students practice a very dualistic type of spirituality: there is the world and
the divine; there is school and there is church; there are secular authority
roles such as teachers, and there are spiritual leaders such as preachers;
there are everyday experiences and there are spiritual experiences. My students
have developed a Luther-esque
theology influenced by St. Augustine, where “human fallenness and the difference between Spirit and Letter, Grace and
Law” is emphasized. My students experience a sinful society and
social sins from an early age, and hence they tend to not only emphasize the difference between sin and grace in
their lives, but also stress sin rather than grace.
Sin-inhibiting Grace
Sin
is a present reality for my students. Some of the social sins that they have
experienced are the death of a loved one, the incarceration of a friend or
family member, substances claiming lives of peers or family members, poverty
crippling their dreams and aspirations, and broken relationships manifesting
themselves as trauma. While a Catholic notion of original sin means the
disposition to sin, for my students,
original sin is the condition into which they were born. That is, original sin
includes all the social factors that they did not choose that affect their
lives adversely. For St. Augustine, “this world, the whole temporal and
material plane of creaturely existence…was profoundly affected by the Fall,” (Ludwig
50) and in the same way for my students, the conditions in which they found
themselves has affected everything, including their spiritual lives and
understanding and experience of grace. St. Augustine is helpful here to
contextualize my students’ experiences. In other words, because they emphasize
sin and the difference between sin and grace, my students feel undeserving and
far from grace.
A Limited Experience
of Grace
For
my students, grace is not found daily but rather it comes rarely and in very
meaningful ways. They experience grace as a manifestation that aids them in the
midst of a sinful world, in the midst of the original sin context in which they
find themselves. Grace has not only been compartmentalized to the religious
realm, but it is also perceived as only available for certain people. My students often correlate good people and grace,
where the former is a necessity for the latter. They believe that grace is not
only rare, but that it is not offered to sinful people. Adding to this warped
understanding of grace is the original sin of living in a society that
constantly reminds them that they are sinful or not wanted. Hence, the social
disenfranchisement that they experience translates into their spiritual
experience of grace. Grace is not within their reach because they feel unworthy
to receive it.
Finding
Grace through Rahner’s Theology
I
have decided to bring Karl Rahner into my reflection because I believe that my students will
find tremendous healing and liberation through an opportunity to encounter
grace in a whole new light with Rahner’s approach to grace. Carlos Raul Sosa
Siliezar sums up
Rahner’s importance today
when he explains that Rahner’s theology addresses
“atheism, subjectivism and pluralism.” These
three big currents of thought that affect my students’ thinking and our current
age make Rahner’s theology around grace overwhelmingly relevant to my reflection.
Rahner’s method is one of “transcendental anthropology, one that departs from
man, from ‘below’ and from his existence and experience” (139). He claims that
“it is a methodological process that does not subordinate faith to experience
or entails a subjectivist reduction of faith, but is necessary to overcome the
pit that has opened up between revelation and human experience." This is
important because it highlights the individual experiences of my students
instead of imposing an overall theological theme to their experience. Rahner
does not subjugate individual personal experiences to a theological concept of
revelation, but rather he begins his theology from a universal human
experience.
Rahner on the
Human-Person
In
Rahner’s theology, the most essential part about being human is the capacity of
God, or capax Dei. Our
human nature is solemnly founded in the openness to being human “in our
knowing, our loving, our creating, our hoping; in our questioning, our
dissatisfaction, our discontent, human beings are always open to the more, to
the beyond, to something which is always, finally, unattainable." Any human inspiration comes from the divine, from God who gave us the capacity
to aspire to the transcendent. In fact, “the essence of being human is such
that it is experienced precisely where grace is experienced: grace is only experienced where the human spirit
naturally is,” when we are more
human, grace is revealed.
Under
Rahner’s proposition of the human person, my students can begin to recognize
the presence of grace in their everyday lives by being human beings. The human
person is incapable of not receiving grace, according to Rahner. Every
human endeavor is a vehicle for God to communicate himself. The very process of
learning in the classroom for instance, that entails the process of moving from
not knowing to knowing, is truly an opportunity to reflect on how grace is
present in their lives. Curiosity, that which teachers rely on for students to
learn, is a manifestation of grace for Rahner. This activity alone is at the
center of education, and adding a reflection component to this process can help
my students recognize grace in the process of learning.
Beyond
education, the very discontent and dissatisfaction that my students face due to
the original sin that they find themselves in, is precisely the most evident
presence of grace in their lives. My students have become accustomed to
associating their misfortune with a presence of sin in their lives. However, according
to Rahner, the feelings of wishing for and wanting a different future and
fortune for themselves is a true sense of God’s revelation—of what he wishes
for them as well. Through God’s own self-revelation, I believe, God is telling
my students that he wishes that they become the best version of themselves and
is doing so through the hoping and dissatisfaction they experience daily.
Rahner on Grace
For
Rahner, grace and the natural overlap; there exists no difference. In Rahner’s
view, “grace is primarily God’s universal self-communication, not the sporadic
bestowal of certain divine gifts, and all human beings are the addressees of
this communication." Counter-intuitive to how my students think and
experience grace, Rahner believes that the entirety of the human experience is
the vehicle for God to communicate himself. Thus, grace is everywhere and in
everything.
The
case is not that grace is not present in my student’s lives, but that my
students are not able to see it as such, and this is so because they have been
conditioned to think about grace in a particular way. With this understanding
that grace is primarily God’s universal self-communication and that all human
beings are the addressees of this communication, my students do not have to sit
around and wait for grace, they do not have feel worthy of grace to receive
grace, they do not have to beg for grace, they do not have to become something
or someone to receive grace and they do not need to experience any particular
thing to recognize it as grace.
The
above understanding is a helpful tool for my students since they understand
grace to exist only in rare cases, to a particular group of people, and usually
in a religious context. For my students, the language that surrounds grace, and
therefore shapes their experiences of grace, is challenged by Rahner. Their
ability to create language built around grace is extremely limited. Rahner challenges
them to expand their imagination into every realm of their lives, to think
critically about what God wishes to reveal about himself to them in every
aspect of their daily existence.
Rahner on Freedom
When
I speak to my students face-to-face about real hardships in their lives, an
underlying premise I have noticed is that my students find it very hard to
believe that they are in charge of their lives. They have lost a great deal of
autonomy and therefore believe their will and their choices are constructs
which are not at work in their lives. The social context and the social sins in
which they were born are inhibiting them from the ability to develop a sense of
individual independence. This reality
translates into their spiritual experiences. By thinking they do not have ownership over their lives,
they relinquish control over any possible change in their lives, they hand over
their call to be children of God.
On freedom, “Rahner says that the human is
‘left to himself . . . placed in his own hands…It is in being consigned to
himself that he experiences himself as responsible and free." While it is true that the original sin my students inherited (the social
conditions they find themselves in) are not by choice, Rahner still holds that
aside from those the human person is radically free. Rahner argues that
"freedom is always mediated by the concrete reality of time and space, of
man's materiality and his history” and further that, “our being is a task to be
achieved, a project to be realized, a process to be brought to completion. We
determine and dispose of ourselves as a whole. Our final being is a
‘self-realization,’ a ‘self-achievement,’ worked out in time and space." This is perhaps the most difficult notion to facilitate to my
students, but one that is essential to living healthy, rich spiritual lives.
Jesus said, “I came so that you may have life and have it in abundance." This life-in-abundance promised by Jesus cannot be fulfilled by my students
unless they develop a sense of ownership over their lives, including over their
spiritual lives.
For
any teenager, but particularly for my inner-city students, thinking about
choices is a daunting task. Usually it is framed under the notion that there
are good choices and bad choices and my students already find themselves with a
plethora of ‘dos and don’ts.’ However, Rahner offers much more than moral
obligations attached to choices. Rahner expresses that one way of being
completely human and open to life-in-abundance, is by exercising one’s freedom.
He does not mean choosing the right moral obligations attached to choices, but
rather the human construct of what makes us our
own person. Rahner claims, “human beings are mystically constituted to
question who they are, and the mystery of who we are leads naturally to the
mystery of God." In our
choices we define ourselves as
different from others and enter into the mystery of discovering who we are and
the mystery of God.
For
my students, grace through freedom can be understood through the choices that
they make and which make up their personality and their dreams. High school is
a time for teenagers to explore themselves, and in those choices, Rahner states
that God is manifesting himself. In the making of themselves or their own
person, grace is abundant. In the freedom of choosing their own dreams, grace
is abundant. Their daily choices that aid them to the dreams awaiting on their
horizon are a presence of infinite grace.
Making Grace Visible
I have come to realize the narrow perspective that I had in
this situation. In my initial approach to grace in the lives of my students, I
quickly believed that they were not able to see grace in their lives, and while
this is true, it is also true that I was blind as well. I was focused more on
the social factors, the original sin that affects my students daily, instead of
the human-filled moments full of grace. Grace was, is, and will be present in
their humanity, but I was not able to
see this presence. In my reflection, I have come to change my own
perspective and approach to how my students are experiencing grace, as a
person, and as teacher.
As a person that is responding to my
students’ needs, Rahner is helping me to see grace as the horizon that is always
unattainable. The dreams that my students aspire to is a real presence of the
revelation of God. Furthermore, the dissatisfaction that they feel is a
manifestation of the presence of God that stirs them to move towards their
dreams. I thought that grace had to be present in a materialized perspective,
but Rahner is teaching me that grace is found in the most personal inner
movements of a person. Personally, I have come to understand grace as real
change. Therefore, although I came to experience many of my students’ lives as
seeming to be stuck in social sins
beyond themselves, Rahner is teaching me to see grace present amongst dreams
and hopes even if they do not come to fruition during the short time that I am
a part of their lives. Today, I respond to my students’ needs by encouraging
them to dream, to hope, to be filled with a grace that stirs them to re-imagine
a new future for themselves. In everything I do as a person with them, I am
committed to a spirituality of hope.
Rahner
is also helping me see grace as the freedom we possess simply by virtue of
being human and the real grace that is present when we exercise this freedom.
Aside from any moral weight on our choices, the very act of making choices
(particularly choices that have to do with who
we are) is a manifestation of God’s grace. Instead of being focused on the
choices that my students lack, I now encourage them to make daily choices that direct
them to the infinite horizon of their dreams. These choices can be as simple as
choosing the class which will highlight their personality and will help them
think of a future career path. I am now committed to empowering my students to
believe in their ability to make choices and in the goodness and grace-filled
activity that this process embodies.
As
a teacher I have come to re-imagine curiosity. In my past teaching experiences,
I only saw curiosity as an essential part of the teaching—curiosity had very
little spiritual significance. However, through this course, I can now see curiosity
is a means to see grace present in the lives of my students. In a high school
educational setting, curiosity is at the center of learning. As a teacher, I
can see grace operating in the openness that the students have towards
curiosity in my classroom. For Rahner, curiosity stimulates the divine
experience that stirs an individual to look onto the eternal horizon. The process to spark curiosity means
to move the essence of what makes us human, to point to the essential nature of
being human that propels us to ask questions and seek for answers. The process of an
educator to impart curiosity gives students not only the best experience of
learning, but also an experience to live
out grace. However, this is only a part of a process for students to be
able to see grace. As a teacher, I
can plan for opportunities to invite my students to experience curiosity, but
another essential step to add to my pedagogy is looking back at the process of
experiencing curiosity in the going from not-knowing to knowing. This process
of reflection upon their learning is a grace-filled activity as well.
Reflection can lead a student to see the divine presence in learning.
Currently, I ensure that my teaching is full of opportunities to spark the
curiosity of my students, and in this I see grace operating in their lives in a
very human way. I am also committed to reflection. I provide daily
opportunities for students to reflect on their work. I believe this is
essential for learning, but with Rahner, I can now also see that it is essential
in seeing God present in the lives of
my students.
The story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus is a great
metaphor for the blindness both my students and I experienced. The story tells
us that two disciples are “downcast” while discussing everything that had
happened. Then, “as they talked and discussed these things with each other,
Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from
recognizing him.” (Lk. 24:14-16). Grace is present even when we are downcast,
narrow-minded, and with our focus on things other
than the messiah. And then, Jesus speaks to them and they proclaim “were not
our hearts burning within us while he talked with us?” (30-31) paralleling the
enthusiasm and life-filled experience we encounter when we speak of our dreams
and hopes, when our lives focus on our deep and personal desires. Like the
disciples, my students and I had our eyes downcast and focused on our plight,
but now we know the answer we are seeking for is in our midst. With awareness,
grace will come in, walk with us, fill our hearts with dreams, and restore us to
fullness of life.
