Grace in the Catechism of the Catholic Church
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c3a2.htm
-
1996 Our justification comes from the
grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved
help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God,
adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46
-
1997 Grace is a participation in
the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian
life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of
his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God
"Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the
Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.
-
1998 This vocation to eternal life
is supernatural. It depends entirely on God's gratuitous
initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of
human intellect and will, as that of every other creature.47
-
1999 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
-
2000 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.
-
2001 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
-
2002 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
-
2003 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
-
2004 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
-
2005 Since it belongs to the supernatural
order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except
by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude
that we are justified and saved.56 However, according to the
Lord's words "Thus you will know them by their fruits"57 -
reflection on God's blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers
us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater
faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.
-
A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found
in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her
ecclesiastical judges: "Asked if she knew that she was in God's grace, she
replied: 'If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it
please God to keep me there.'"58
-
2017 The grace of the Holy Spirit
confers upon us the righteousness of God. Uniting us by faith and Baptism to
the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, the Spirit makes us sharers in his
life.
-
2018 Like conversion, justification
has two aspects. Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, and so
accepts forgiveness and righteousness from on high.
-
2019 Justification includes the
remission of sins, sanctification, and the renewal of the inner man.
-
2020 Justification has been merited
for us by the Passion of Christ. It is granted us through Baptism. It conforms
us to the righteousness of God, who justifies us. It has for its goal the glory
of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life. It is the most excellent
work of God's mercy.
-
2021 Grace is the help God gives us to
respond to our vocation of becoming his adopted sons. It introduces us into the
intimacy of the Trinitarian life.
-
2022 The divine initiative in the work
of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace
responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate
with it, and perfects freedom.
-
2023 Sanctifying grace is the
gratuitous gift of his life that God makes to us; it is infused by the Holy
Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.
-
2024 Sanctifying grace makes us
"pleasing to God." Charisms, special graces of the Holy Spirit, are
oriented to sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the
Church. God also acts through many actual graces, to be distinguished from
habitual grace which is permanent in us.
-
2025 We can have merit in God's sight
only because of God's free plan to associate man with the work of his grace.
Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to
man's collaboration. Man's merit is due to God.
-
2026 The grace of the Holy Spirit can
confer true merit on us, by virtue of our adoptive filiation, and in accordance
with God's gratuitous justice. Charity is the principal source of merit in us
before God.
-
2027 No one can merit the initial
grace which is at the origin of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can
merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal
life, as well as necessary temporal goods.
-
2028 "All Christians
. . . are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the
perfection of charity" (LG 40 § 2). "Christian perfection
has but one limit, that of having none" (St. Gregory of Nyssa, De
vita Mos.:PG 44, 300D).
-
2029 "If any man would come after
me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mt 16:24).
-
34 Rom 3:22; cf. 6:3-4.
35 Rom 6:8-11.
36 Cf. 1 Cor 12; Jn 15:1-4.
37 St. Athanasius, Ep. Serap. 1,24:PG 26,585 and 588.
38 Mt 4:17.
39 Council of Trent (1547): DS 1528.
40 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1529.
41 Rom 3:21-26.
42 Council of Trent (1547): DS 1525.
43 St. Augustine, In Jo. ev. 72,3:PL 35,1823.
44 Cf. Rom 7:22; Eph 3:16.
45 Rom 6:19,22.
46 Cf. Jn 1:12-18; 17:3; Rom 8:14-17; 2
Pet 1:3-4.
47 Cf. 1 Cor 2:7-9.
48 Cf. Jn 4:14; 7:38-39.
49 2 Cor 5:17-18.
50 St. Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17:PL 44,901.
51 St. Augustine, De natura et gratia, 31:PL 44,264.
52 St. Augustine, Conf. 13,36 51:PL 32,868; cf. Gen 1:31.
53 Cf. LG 12.
54 Cf. 1 Cor 12.
55 Rom 12:6-8.
56 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1533-1534.
57 Mt 7:20.
58 Acts of the trial of St. Joan of Arc.
59 Roman Missal, Prefatio I de sanctis; Qui in Sanctorum
concilio celebraris, et eorum coronando merita tua dona coronas, citing the
"Doctor of grace," St. Augustine, En. in Ps. 102,7:PL
37,1321-1322.
60 Council of Trent (1547): DS 1546.
61 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1548.
62 St. Augustine, Sermo 298,4-5:PL 38,1367.
63 St. Thérèse of Lisieux, "Act of Offering" in Story of a
Soul, tr. John Clarke (Washington DC: ICS, 1981), 277.
64 Rom 8:28-30.
65 LG 40 § 2.
66 Mt 5:48.
67 LG 40 § 2.
68 Cf. 2 Tim 4.
69 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Hom. in Cant. 8:PG 44,941C.
70 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1576.
71 Rev 21:2.
No comments:
Post a Comment