Grace

Grace is the free help God gives man to save him and lead him to himself. All that man receives in order to go to God, from the first call to eternal life, comes to him from this generosity. The word itself says its gratuity, for “grace” (from the Latin gratia, which renders the Greek charis, χάρις) means a gift that nothing requires and nothing claims: “And of his fulness we all have received: and grace for grace.” John 1:16

A free gift

Grace is given without being owed. It precedes man and goes before him, answering to no merit: it is God who loves and gives first. Here lies its very nature, which nothing in man can earn: “And if by grace, it is not now by works: otherwise grace is no more grace.” Romans 11:6 This gratuity concerns first of all the first gift: no one can merit the grace that begins his conversion, since it precedes all that man might offer; what man merits afterward, he already merits by it.

Necessary, and offered to all

Grace is necessary. God calls man to an end that surpasses his nature, to see him and live by his life; but what surpasses a nature cannot be reached by the powers of that nature; God must therefore raise man and carry him, without which none of his acts would reach that end. Christ says it to his disciples: “Without me you can do nothing.” John 15:5 And this grace God offers to every man, for he wills the salvation of all: “Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy 2:4

Given by Christ in the Spirit

Grace was fully manifested in Christ, who merited it for men by his death and resurrection: “the grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men.” Titus 2:11 The Holy Spirit then pours it into hearts: “And hope confoundeth not: because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost who is given to us.” Romans 5:5 One thus distinguishes uncreated grace, which is God himself giving himself in his Spirit, and created grace, the gift he places in the soul and that transforms it.

The forms of grace

This created grace appears under two principal modes, sanctifying grace and actual grace. To these two modes are added the graces proper to each sacrament, the charisms (gifts granted to one for the good of all) and the graces of state, the help proper to each one’s vocation, which God gives to the spouse, the priest or the parent to carry out the task to which he calls him. All are the same generosity of God, received in diverse ways.

Sanctifying grace

Sanctifying grace is the permanent gift that God infuses into the soul and that remains there. It transforms man in depth and establishes him in a new condition, that of a child of God, born of him by adoption: “as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God.” John 1:12 It thus raises him to an order that surpasses his nature, making him able to live by the very life of God: “that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature.” 2 Peter 1:4 This participation is what the Fathers named divinization: without ceasing to be a creature, man is given to share in the very life of God, according to the word of Saint Irenaeus, that the Son of God became what we are in order to make us what he is himself.

This passage from the state of sin to the condition of a child of God bears the name of justification. It is a real interior renewal: the grace infused into the soul makes it truly just and holy, and not merely held to be just on the outside while it would remain a sinner. The Council of Trent affirmed this against the idea of a justice only imputed, where the fault would be covered without being taken away: in the justified man, sin is really effaced and holiness really given. “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” 1 Corinthians 6:11

With it, God himself comes to dwell in the soul: the Trinity makes its home there. “Jesus answered and said to him: If any one love me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.” John 14:23 With it are infused the theological virtues, faith, hope and charity, together with the gifts of the Holy Spirit: the soul receives the means to know, to hope in and to love God beyond its own powers.

It is received for the first time at baptism, grows through the sacraments, prayer and works of charity, is lost through mortal sin, and is recovered through the sacrament of penance, which fully restores it.

Actual grace

Actual grace is the passing help that God grants to accomplish a good act: it enlightens the intellect and strengthens the will, the time of a choice or a movement of the heart, then renews itself according to need. God is its source and acts first: “For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will.” Philippians 2:13 The very movement by which man turns toward Christ does not come from himself alone, but from the grace that goes before him: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 12:3

Prevenient, it goes before man to awaken in him the desire for good; cooperating, it sustains him while he acts, so that his work is at once a gift of God and an act of man: “by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace in me hath not been void.” 1 Corinthians 15:10 God renews it at every step and himself brings to completion the work of sanctification he has begun in man: “he who hath begun a good work in you will perfect it unto the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6

This help respects the freedom it moves: God touches the soul without forcing it, and man can consent to it or withdraw from it: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” Hebrews 3:15 Received and followed, it leads the sinner to conversion and disposes him to receive or to recover sanctifying grace.

Grace and freedom

Grace moves the freedom of man without suppressing it. Two opposite errors forced the Church to make this point precise. In the fifth century, the monk Pelagius held that man can will and accomplish the good that saves by his own powers alone, grace being only a useful help and not a necessary one. Saint Augustine answered him that without grace man can neither begin nor complete the least step toward salvation, and that the first movement of the will toward God is already the work of prevenient grace, the grace that goes before man ahead of all merit; the second Council of Orange, in 529, settled this doctrine. The opposite error is to make grace act alone by suppressing freedom, as if man were only passive under an action that would sweep him along without him. God moves the will without constraining it, so that man freely consents to what grace works in him, and the Council of Trent set aside both excesses at once.

And so Scripture joins the action of God and that of man without confusing them: God gives the new heart and himself makes man walk according to his ways. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk according to my laws.” Ezekiel 36:26-27 Man truly walks, and it is God who makes him walk. For this reason one distinguishes two states of actual grace: sufficient, it really gives the power to accomplish the good and leaves it to the will to consent or to refuse; efficacious, it carries the consent and produces the act, without ever forcing the freedom it moves.

Grace and merit

Man established in grace can merit. His good acts, accomplished under the motion of God and by charity, obtain a growth of grace and, at the end, eternal life. “He will render to each one according to his works.” Romans 2:6 This merit does not touch the gratuity, for it rests wholly on a gift: it is grace that makes man able to act for God, and the meritorious act proceeds from it before coming from him. The Council of Trent teaches it with Saint Augustine: when God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing other than his own gifts. And so the reward of the just is promised as something due and received as a grace. “Henceforth a crown of justice is laid up for me, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me.” 2 Timothy 4:8

From grace to glory

The grace received in time is the beginning of the life that God will give in eternity. What it inaugurates here below is fulfilled in the vision of God, where the gift attains its fullness: “the Lord will give grace and glory.” Psalm 84:12