The Lord be with you! This week we are going to review grace. What is it? How do we grow in it? Why do we always want more of it? Grace does more than forgive our sins; grace makes us divine.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, grace is the gift from God that makes us holy, "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" (CCC 1999). Let's break this definition down so that we can appreciate how amazing grace is.
First, grace is the gift of God's life - the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - in us. Although only God can have the fullness and perfection of His Life, each of us can partially participate in that same Life. We are not speaking metaphorically when we say that the Holy Spirit dwells among us; we are speaking the literal and plain truth: God, the Omnipotent and All Holy, descends to live in us.
Second, grace is a gift. The Latin for grace is gratia which denotes the act of giving, the gift that was given, and the act of receiving. Catholics and Protestants agree about the first two senses of grace in that we assert that God gives us grace from His own goodness and that grace changes us. Catholics further affirm that the reception of grace can be meritorious - we can cooperate with grace and grow in it such that we should get more grace.
Third, grace comes from Baptism and is how we are sanctified. The work of sanctification is the work of our life with God and lasts from the moment we first receive grace to the moment we die. We Catholics highlight that God wants us to work with Him in making ourselves holy. God does not merely give us grace and forget about us! Instead, this gift is a gift that is meant for us to draw upon for deeper and more profound acts of love.
The sacraments are the primary way for us to receive and grow in grace although they are not the only way. The Church has taught, albeit not definitively, that God offers the grace of sanctification to those even outside the Church. This general teaching rests on the reasoning that God desires all human beings to be saved, but that requires a longer and nuanced discussion. For now we should focus on how the sacraments make us into truer and better children of God.
Every time we receive Communion is another opportunity to grow in grace. How many times have we forgotten to take advantage of this? May we grow in God every day!
In His Sacred Heart,
Fr. John
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