Peace be to you.

Because the subject of grace is so very important,

it might be well to continue it a bit here,

and then to tell you how that grace is communicated to us.

Grace divides the world actually into two kinds of humanity.

The once born and the twice born.

The once born are those who were born only of their parents. The twice born are those who were born only of their parents.

The twice born are those who were born of their parents and also born of God.

One group of men are what might be called natural.

The other in addition to having nature, also share in a mysterious way in the divine

life of God and in his thoughts and in his love. Grace is so very sensitive that it is possible for us to reject it, many times even during

the day.

Let me therefore tell you two incidents about grace.

On one occasion I went down from Belgium to Paris to preach a sermon in a church of Paris.

On the first Sunday of February, I stayed in a tiny little hotel near the Oprah Comique, and in a small side room there was an Englishman playing a piano.

I listened to him for a while and then complimented him and invited him to dinner.

He said, I have never eaten with a priest before. And I said, well,

we are just like anyone else if you stick me with a pin. I will bleed too. In the course of the dinner,

he said, I have a problem I would like to present to you.

I have never met, he said, in my life, one good man or one good woman.

I thanked him for the compliment, and then he went on to tell me that just a year from this coming 12th of February, over at that table there indicating a table in the corner, he saw a woman trying to break a lump of sugar into a cup of coffee. He went over to her, broke the lump. She then told him how cruel her husband was, and he said,

come and live with me. He said, I'm now tired of her. I get tired of them all after about a year.

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