Course on Grace: Grace Considered Intensively. Sanctifying Grace [Catholic and Open]

Course on Grace
Part Two - A

Grace Considered Intensively

by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Chapter VIII.

Sanctifying Grace

St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, declares that "the justification of the ungodly … is greater than the creation of heaven and earth" (l-2qll3a9). Since the former is a supernatural work of the highest order and the other only natural, more glory is given to God in justification than by all perfections of nature. Is justification, then, the greatest supernatural work? No, the Incarnation of the Word and the beatification of the just in heaven are greater.

Causes of justification. What causes a sinner's justification? Many causes conspire harmoniously to bring it about. The efficient cause is God, the Triune God; its final cause is the glory of God and Christ and eternal life; its meritorious cause is Christ; its instrumental cause is baptism; its formal cause is sanctifying grace.

Nature of Sanctifying Grace. What is sanctifying grace? It has been called the "masterpiece of God's handicraft in this world … far more glorious than anything we can behold in the heavens above us or on the earth at our feet." Is it just God's favor toward us, as Luther wanted? No, it is much more. Is it God's life or nature or God's love, as some have called it? No, for God's life and love and nature are uncreated, are God Himself. Sanctifying grace is not God, it is not the Holy Spirit, it is not just God's favor. It is something created, given to us by God out of love and mercy, which gives us a created likeness of God's nature and life. It is a supernatural gift infused into our souls by God, a positive reality, spiritual, supernatural, and invisible.

Divine Quality. According to St. Thomas, sanctifying grace "is neither a substance nor a substantial form, but an accidental form, a permanent quality placed by God in the very essence of the soul, which causes it to participate by means of a certain likeness in the divine nature" (1-2q110aa.2-4). No wonder, then that the Roman Catechism calls it a "divine quality."

Sanctifying grace is not a substance, then, but an accident. But it is a most remarkable accident, sui generis, like no other. In terms of its supernatural perfection it is much higher than the soul in which it inheres. God has established a most wonderful harmony here: sanctifying grace "needing" my soul as subject of inhesion, my soul "needing" sanctifying grace so as to become deiform. Sanctifying grace is such an extraordinary thing that some have denied it could exist; they thought God could not make such a quality, or if He could it would do violence to nature. But God quietly infuses sanctifying grace into a soul without doing any violence to it. These two things fit perfectly together in a most remarkable union of nature and grace, to produce a most amazing new unit: a deiform soul.

Sanctifying grace is not a virtue, according to St. Thomas, not even the virtue of charity, but it is the foundation of all the infused virtues. It is a gift by which "the very nature of man is raised to a measure of dignity that places it in the same plane as its end." Just as our natural faculties (operative principles) derive from nature, "so in the faculties of the soul do the (infused) virtues that move them, derive from grace." While the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are supernatural operative and responsive habits, sanctifying grace is a supernatural initiative habit, somewhat as health is in the body in the natural order. Often theologians call sanctifying grace a quasi-nature, or a "super-nature."

Some of its Effects. Sanctifying grace has many, almost incredible effects. St. Thomas singles out especially four. 1. Destruction of sin, such that "the forgiveness of sin would be incomprehensible without the infusion of grace," 2. Deification, such that the creature is made deiform and shares in a sonship of adoption. 3. Inhabitation, a special presence of God to which sanctifying grace gives rise. 4. Merit, of which sanctifying grace is the essential foundation. To sanctifying grace the Council of Trent ascribes the supernatural justice and friendship with God and the interior renovation and sanctification of the just soul. Pope Pius XI called it the “permanent principle of supernatural life." According to theologians and saints it gives the soul a special supernatural beauty. Some of these effects we shall consider presently, others in the chapters that follow.

Justice. Through sanctifying grace we are made "just," with a mysterious justice that is hard to define precisely. It is not the cardinal virtue of justice, which inclines our will to give everyone his due, but involves this and much more. It is an internal, "deep down," supernatural justice or rectitude before God, whereby we are rightly ordered for supernaturally producing all acts of all virtues. Essentially it consists in sanctifying grace, adequately it involves also the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps the word that most vividly expresses this justice is rectitude, supernatural rectitude or righteousness. The man made just by God through sanctifying grace, is supernaturally right in the depths of his soul, mind and will; he is (ontologically) rightly ordered toward God, neighbor and self. Sanctifying grace is a principle of rectitude within his soul: by it his soul is supernaturally right with God. His mind (through faith) is right with God, not just with the God of the universe, of nature, but with the Triune God of faith. That is why it is easier for a sinner to come back: the virtue of faith is still in him. A picture of Christ on the Cross can be a most powerful motive, moving him to contrition. And as faith orientates the mind toward the "inside" of God, the essence of God and the Trinity of Persons, so the infused virtue of charity makes the will right, rightly orientated for loving the Triune God.

Sanctifying grace, then, in making us just, gives us a basic supernatural rectitude, a deep-down orientation and inclination to an all-virtuous life. We sometimes think it would have been convenient if God had put it "nearer the surface," so to speak. For persons and things around us often pull us strongly away from right action, We have adequate principles of right action deep within us, it is true, but we are very much affected by persons and things, and do not always act rightly. Our first aim, then, is always to act rightly. But a much higher degree of perfection would be not merely to do the right action, but to do it perfectly in God’s way and at God’s time, by habitually following the lead of the Holy Spirit drawing us through the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Deletion of Sins. When a man is made just through sanctifying grace, all his mortal sins (and original sin, if he has it) are remitted; if he is justified through sanctifying grace in baptism, all his sins are remitted, and should he die then he is ready for immediate entry into glory.

Mortal sin means a privation of sanctifying grace. So when grace comes, mortal sin must "go." It really "goes," is remitted and deleted; it is not just covered over as it were by a cloak of the merits of Christ, as Luther said. God does not just declare the sinner to be just and cover over his sins, but He makes him just and remits his sins by the infusion of sanctifying grace. God does not merely say something, as Luther thought, He does something. By infusing sanctifying grace He remits sin. For sanctifying grace (righteousness) and mortal sin (unrighteousness) are contraries which necessarily exclude each other. Mortal sin brings supernatural darkness and death: sanctifying grace brings supernatural light, beauty, life. Sanctifying grace just has to be there, and there is supernatural light, beauty and life in the soul (and mortal sin is gone). Sanctifying grace is beauty so it infuses beauty into the soul; it is light, so it gives infused light to the soul; it is life, so it gives deiform life to the soul. It is a form which simply by being in the soul, imparts what it is.

Beauty. Sanctifying grace gives the soul an ineffable, supernatural beauty. St. Chrysostome compares the beauty of a soul in sanctifying grace to a statue of gold, St. Basil to a shining light flooding a crystal and to transforming fire. St. Ambrose describes a soul as "painted by God," having "the loveliness of virtues" and reflecting "the image of divine activity." According to St. Thomas, "divine grace beautifies (the soul) like Light."

St. Catherine of Siena declared: "Had you, my father confessor, beheld the beauty of one soul adorned with grace, you would certainly for the sake of one such soul, gladly suffer death a thousand times." St. Teresa compared a soul in grace to a crystal globe illuminated from without by the rays of grace, and within by the rays of God’s own beauty.

Friendship. Closely connected with the beauty which sanctifying grace confers, is the supernatural friendship it establishes between God and the soul since true beauty elicits love and benevolence. By nature man is merely a servant of God; since the fall, he is His enemy, Sanctifying grace transforms this hostile relation into genuine friendship. For God loves the just man as His intimate friend, and enables and impels him by means of sanctifying grace and charity to reciprocate that love with all his heart. Here we have the two constituent elements of friendship.

Friendship according to Aristotle is "the conscious love of benevolence of two persons for each other." So there must be lovability in each friend. Love is measured by lovability, by goodness. Divine goodness in God, deiform goodness in man: these are the conditions of divine friendship. Through sanctifying grace man has deiform goodness, goodness and lovability like unto God’s. Through the infused virtue of charity he has the power to love as God loves. So God loves him with the pure love of friendship and draws man to reciprocate that love with all his heart.

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Course on GracePart Two - A Grace Considered Intensively

Chapter VIII.

Sanctifying Grace

Course on Grace
Part Two - A

Grace Considered Intensively