“Grace puts its hand on the boasting mouth and shuts it once and for all.” – Charles Spurgeon.

Joe Biden surprises me every day. The sudden courtesy and normalcy, and civility in the air is nothing less than stunning.

The quiet is so very loud. And so very welcome.

This feeling Biden brings us is hardly ever associated with politics, certainly not in the past four wrenching years.

It is grace.

Joe Biden never really caught my attention before; he seemed to melt into the political maelstrom, another apparatchik, a machine man.

He has my attention now, and my admiration. And my apology.

I was thinking about the particular quality he has brought to his country just in time for Thanksgiving and the presidency so far.

There is suddenly a new and perhaps temporary mood in much of America. Around here, almost all of the Biden and Trump signs are gone. I felt the tone shift right away.

The reason, I think,  is Joe Biden and the grace he has abruptly brought to the civic stage. No matter what happens next, it is a beautiful thing to feel after this awful year.

It calls us to hope to see what is possible. We can be decent, civil, caring people.  If we can do it for a day or so, we can do it for a week. We can care about more than money.

“Once you have grace,” Thomas Merton told a friend, “you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do and that you know you don’t really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free.”

Biden is free.

A devout Catholic, Biden knows what grace is and what it means.  A 79-year-old man, he has nothing to lose, no earth-shattering ambitions to obsess over, no years and years to plot.

I believe in reality. There is plenty of poison still spewing all around him, many people who swear to make him another martyr of do-gooding. They might yet do it.

But the contrast is already profound. I appreciate it.

Donald Trump has many traits, but grace is not one of them.

So it is a blessing and a shock to see grace suddenly appear in our civic life. Biden has greatly rattled the toxic political environment he wanted so badly to join again.

He is the one thing they are not used to dealing with; they mumble and bumble and stumble even as they try to hurt and slander him.

It brings me a lot of smiles to see that very few of the people running the country now in the White House or Congress know what to do. Grace is the one thing they were not prepared for; they don’t have a voice for courtesy or decency.

Grace is not a prayer I chant before receiving a meal. It’s a way to live. The law tells me how crooked I can be, Grace comes along and straightens me out.

Grace is contagious; I believe many people in the country will welcome it, embrace it, and perhaps even support it.

Grace is decency.

It is a good virus; it can spread.

It is the absence of hate, a willingness to hear and listen; it is empathy and compassion, gifts all human beings are given at birth, but few are taught how to use them.

I’ve sought grace my whole life, and if I am still struggling to have it, I am coming to know it when I see it. Grace releases and affirms; it doesn’t smother or belittle. It values the dignity of individuals. It doesn’t destroy. It isn’t jealous or suspicious or filled with grievance.

It supports and encourages.

Grace, wrote Jonathan Edwards, is “but glory began, and glory is but grace perfected.”

Grace is peace in the midst of hatred and chaos.

Joe Biden was not anyone’s first choice for President.

He floundered alone and was broke for months in the never-ending primaries, ridiculed (by me too) as a bumbling old man past his prime who just never knew when to quit and was prone to missteps and gaffes.

Let a woman win. Let someone younger run. Let someone different run. It didn’t seem his time, yet it very much is his time. It’s time for a Black President. All true. Life is full of crisis and mystery.

Be very careful of the pundits you choose to follow and trust.

Certainly, no one (not me) back then saw Joe Biden as likely to vanquish the Mad King, slaughterer of hopefuls and spewer of lies, nasty nicknames, and ridicule. The wise men and women said – almost to a one – that we needed something different; Biden would be chewed up and spit out.

Look who’s crying now?

Grace is the voice that calls us to change and then gives us the power to pull it off. Grace is the voice of the divine, whether one is religious or note. Grace is the song of our better angels.

“For grace is given not because we have done good works, but so that we may be able to do them,” said St. Augustine of Hippo.

Every day, Biden is viciously attacked every day, scores and scores of times, by the President, by many of his followers, by many Republicans. They call him a liar, a thief, a vicious conspirator who stole an election, a senile old man who can’t cross the street.

A priest I know says the brutal attacks on Joe Biden brings back the image of Jesus, stoned spit on, kicked, and reviled as he drags his cross behind him on the way to his death.

Biden turns the cheek. He doesn’t lie. He doesn’t bluster. He doesn’t hate.  If he’s bothered, it doesn’t show. No wonder Trump is going bonkers.

Could Biden really be that rarest creature, a politician who actually lives by his faith?

Biden never responds to insults or assaults, not since his election.

He never takes the bait; he never stoops to a lower level; he never even bothers to defend himself.  He talks about the work he needs to do, the crisis he needs to address.

It is as if he is leaving all of the ugliness to his God to sort out. The people who know him best say that is his truth.

That is, in fact, a very Christian idea. Let God share the pain and the burden; we need to live.

In turning away from the hatred, Biden exposes it, brings it out into the light. Without ever even mentioning his name, Biden has made Trump look small, impotent, and ridiculous. Even the most afflicted worriers are feeling better.

Trump needs attention, like Dracula needs blood. Without it, he withers and spins and froths. Through Grace, Biden is starving him of what he most needs and feeds on.

He responds to Trump every day by what he does, not what he says.

Donald Trump was always hateful by choice and nature, but he never looked pathetic before, hiding in the White House and on his golf courses, spewing hateful and dishonest tweets while thousands of people die on his watch.

Grace is enough, say the faithful. Grace is sufficient even though we try with all of our might to find something it cannot cover or contain.  Grace values the dignity of human beings.

Grace is enough.

Under great pressure, one man spews hatred and grievance like a broken water pipe; the other keeps his dignity and grace.

Aristotle was speaking of grace when he wrote, “the ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.”

This, I am surprised but happy to see, is what Joe Biden is doing – he is an accident of life, for sure, and he bears cruelty and suffering with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances that have already broken his tormentor.

I wish him good luck. Philosopher A.W. Tozer wrote that “abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind.”