Grace and Nature
If you saw a close friend or family member held at gunpoint or overdosed on drugs in an ambulance, what is your first thought? In your finitude at such moments, you are loving with all your potentiality and trying to act beyond perhaps, how much more in God's Infinitude and Omnipotence does He do everything in His power to help those He died to save? You may even be so bold as to discord to say, "would rather I have the addiction, or the gun pointed at me than them". If you think about the death and destruction that sin brings, it makes sense that God would give us some help. Is there anything, said person did to gain your love to this extent? Not likely except if it was your child, you likely love them more, at least have chosen to participate in a reproductive act that brought them life, more than this, God designed their soul to uphold and give expression to their matter that will give expression to the soul. It is the Catholic position that the gift of Christ's life is channeled through the Holy Spirit into our hearts, and it transforms them.
It is often said that grace builds "on" nature, and of course, there is some truth to this. Certainly, especially in the case of addiction, psychology and physiology can have their issues in discord with the intellect. However, the intellect, the will, and even the physiology can grow/repair without more grace than usual being given, through fortitude and the intellect, at least, depending on what is attributed to grace (every good or some good of the soul). Grace is most evident in the supernatural goodness it bestows on us and others. "By grace before, we are born again sons of God. But generation terminates at the essence prior to the powers. Therefore, grace is in the soul's essence prior to discord being in the powers." [1] "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. Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us to 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."[2] Grace is the "material" of the soul, therefore nature itself is made greater with increases in grace.
In conclusion, "Let us...approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16). Grace presupposes nature, builds nature, builds on nature, and builds with nature. "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace, you have been saved"(Ephesians 2:4-5). "Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation...Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you." In the last few weeks, we have examined the fact that salvation is something that certainly, takes place in the presence sent in since we are delivered from our enemies already some now, but not yet fully. This is to say we certainly, participate in the Kingdom now but it remains our struggle to continue to unfold the graces of the sacraments in our lives by acting with them, i.e not apart from them, or despite them. Grace does not force salvation upon us, but it is necessary we with it bring about the transformation of our hearts. This transformation will be seen by those that know us whence we become a sacrament of the Incarnation through such grace. God's favor and love are extended through our relationships with others when we, like Mary, are filled with grace's salvific power extending Heaven and something of salvation to those we encounter, and we do so in haste (Luke 1:39–56).
FN:
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I-II, q. 110, a. 1 as found at https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2110.htm
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1996-1997.
JOHN DONNE:
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run,
And do run still, though still, I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou has not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive has that sin by which I’ve won.
Others to sin? And made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When thou has done thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swearby buy thy self, that at my death thy Sun
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, Thou has done,
I have no more.
