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There's a false dichotomy here. Nobody ever said God doesn't bestow grace lavishly, as if He had some limitation and could only "parcel it out" to a "select few." One of the truths we all know is that God is not "bound" by His Sacraments, or by anything at all. (You seem to be thinking that Catholics believe God is confined to His own sacraments, which is not what we believe at all.)

We simply accept the Sacraments very gratefully at His hand, since He founded them all and offered them to us for our great benefit.

The healing of Naaman the Syrian at the hands of the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 5) LINK is an excellent figure for the sacraments.

Naaman take offense at the idea that he could be cured by God through a sacramental sign: "I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?" Scripture adds, "So he turned and went off in a rage."

But then: "Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy."

Well, think about it. Couldn't God have just had Elisha say, "In the name of the God of Israel, be cleansed"? And then with a wave, poof! All better?

But it was the will of God that Naaman be cured by an outward sign, an obedient plunging into the Jordan, the shallow, muddy Jordan, something paltry and senseless and even unnecessary, in his mind. (I recently read that, in contrast, the Pharpar and Abana fed into a system of canals used for irrigation, one of the most complete and extensive in the ancient world.)

But the point was that God willed for Naaman to learn what could best be given only by this sacramental sign.

Like the other physical means of conveying Divine power, a frequent typology in the OT (Elijah's mantle, Aaron's and Moses' rods, even the bones of Elisha which brought a dead man to life) God uses select people, and material things, to be channels of His grace.

If these things were not chosen by God Himself, they would have no significance. But since God acts "sacramentally," we have no authority to minimize or abolish what He gives us.

An exception is a bad thing to make a rule over.

Most Catholics talk as if grace is given only through the sacraments and yet, if grace can be given without them, then there’s no need for them.

When I need God’s grace is when someone cuts me off on the interstate to get to an exit when they could have pulled in behind me.

I need it when I’m in the check out line and someone is paying for luxuries I can’t afford with an EBT card.

Grace is for the moment, not something that can be stored up for a rainy day.

“There’s a false dichotomy here. Nobody ever said God doesn’t bestow grace lavishly, as if He had some limitation and could only “parcel it out” to a “select few.”

Spirited: Agreed. According to Church Father Athanasius, certain elements precede apostasy: a haughty spirit and a will given to rebellion and negation of the Authority and Word of our Lord.

Given this propensity, it makes sense that our Lord would provide sacraments in memory of Himself and everything He has done from the beginning rather than in celebration of ‘human self’ and what ‘self’ believes it has a right to. Therefore, “remember Me when you do this,” said Jesus.

From the beginning, men have been forgetting that everything belongs to God. His Grace therefore is not a ‘human right’ but His to give or not.