Science tells us that certain things are not what they at first seem to our senses. For example, these past few weeks with the early arrival of winter, we have felt the cold. 

 

Cold seems like a reality on its own. But cold is not something in itself. Rather, it is the absence of something. In this case, it is the absence of heat.

 

Heat is different because it is not the absence of cold. Heat is the transfer of energy from one object to another. Heat is therefore a reality in itself.

 

As we think about last things in this month of November, the final month of our liturgical year, we might learn a lesson about our spiritual lives from these scientific truths.

 

For example, we speak often of God’s grace. By that we mean God’s very life that He shares with us and the help He gives us to share more fully in that divine life.

 

Like heat in this world, God’s grace is a reality that is true and real. You and I have been made to be filled with God’s life. 

 

If, at the end of our lives we are judged worthy to join Mary and the saints and angels in God’s presence in heaven, we will be completely filled with grace to the extent that our nature made by God allows. Because of grace, we will be transformed and fulfilled into what God created us to be.

 

Conversely, there will be those who will stand in judgment before Christ at the end of the world who will be told “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt. 25: 41). 

 

Those will be the members of our human race who have made their choice against Christ through their sins. As a result, their souls will be, like the cold, in a state of emptiness and absence. Missing will be God’s grace, His life within them.

 

The objection is sometimes raised that this description of grace is too earthly, too mechanical. It is, so goes the objection, as if our soul were conceived of as a sort of container into which something (grace) is poured by God to a certain level.

 

However, this descriptive language is actually very apt for our understanding of grace. We see grace not as something modeled on a physical reality but instead as a reality of love. 

 

Because man has a true spiritual element to his nature, the idea that God could fill that part of us with Himself and His love makes sense. 

 

So too does the idea that every act of faith, every sacrifice that we make to live the moral life taught by the Church, every act of charity that we carry out, all of these are the moments when we not only receive God’s grace but are slowly transformed to be like Him.

 

One of the tragedies of our very secular and earthbound society is that it accepts as real only what can be perceived by our senses and judged by science. In that way, our bodily reality is stressed but our spiritual nature is left to grow cold and be forgotten.

 

For that reason, our age struggles to accept that God is real. Good and evil are also real, because they are judged by the goodness of God Himself. And yes, the gift of grace is also real.

 

This month of November, the cold and the dying of nature all around as winter approaches reminds us that we were made for more. We are made for life with Christ. Anything else, in the end, like the cold, is the absence of what really matters.