But the astonishing teaching of Christianity is that God has, so to speak, done the next best thing. He could not make man by nature divine, but he has given him divinity as a gift. This is what we call grace. We do share in the divine nature, we do behave like God, but not by nature. We can do what God does, but in God it is natural, in us it is not – we call it supernatural.

Just as it would be supernatural to a horse to write a poem, so it is supernatural to a human being to behave like God. This means that our divinity must always come as a surprise, something eternally astonishing. We could never get used to it and say: “Well, naturally enough.”

The church father Augustine of Hippo and Irish priest Herbert McCabe help us recognize the sacred all around us.