Day 216 - What does God's grace do to us? // How does it relate to freedom?
What does God's grace do to us?
God's grace brings us into the inner life of the Holy Trinity, into the exchange of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It makes us capable of living in God's love and of acting on the basis of this love.
Grace is infused in us from above and cannot be explained in terms of natural causes (supernatural grace). It makes usespecially through Baptismchildren of God and heirs of heaven (sanctifying or deifying grace). It bestows on us a permanent disposition to do good (habitual grace). Grace helps us to know, to will, and to do everything that leads us to what is good, to God, and to heaven (actual grace). Grace comes about in a special way in the sacraments, which according to the will of our Savior are the preeminent places for our encounter with God (sacramental grace). Grace is manifested also in special gifts of grace that are granted to individual Christians (charisms) or in special powers that are promised to those in the state of marriage, the ordained state, or the religious state (graces of state).
How is God's grace related to our freedom?
God's grace is freely bestowed on a person, and it seeks and summons him to respond in complete freedom. Grace does not compel. God's love wants our free assent.
One can also say No to the offer of grace. Grace, nevertheless, is not something external or foreign to man; it is what he actually yearns for in his deepest freedom. In moving us by his grace, God anticipates man's free response. (YOUCAT questions 338-339)
Dig Deeper: CCC section (1999-2004) and other references here.
Part 3: Life in Christ (1691 - 2557)
Section 1: Man's Vocation — Life in the Spirit (1699 - 2051)
Chapter 3: God's Salvation: Law and Grace (1949 - 2051)
Article 2: Grace and Justification (1987 - 2029)
II. GRACE ⇡
The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:48 Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.49
48.
Cf. Jn 4:14; 7:38-39.
49.
Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.
The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it:"50 Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing.51
50.
St. Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17:PL 44,901.
51.
St. Augustine, De natura et gratia, 31:PL 44,264.
God's free initiative demands man's free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of "eternal life" respond, beyond all hope, to this desire: If at the end of your very good works ..., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed "very good" since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the sabbath of eternal life.52
52.
St. Augustine, Conf. 13,36 51:PL 32,868; cf. Gen 1:31.
Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning "favor," "gratuitous gift," "benefit."53 Whatever their character — sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues — charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church.54
53.
Cf. LG 12.
54.
Cf. 1 Cor 12.
Among the special graces ought to be mentioned the graces of state that accompany the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and of the ministries within the Church: Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.55
55.