Grace is what happens when openness to chance yields a deeper awareness of the cosmos or one’s place in it . . . when luck leads to spiritual insight . . . Proust called chance experiences "earth experience of grace."
What would become of our souls if they lacked the bread of earthly reality to nourish them, the wine of created beauty to intoxicate them, the discipline of human struggle to make them strong? What puny powers and bloodless hearts Your creatures would bring to You were they to cut themselves off prematurely from the providential setting in which You placed them!