Grace is a participation in the life of God,
given to us by God himself freely.
In this video, we're going to talk about the causes and effects of grace.
Speaker 1: What is the cause of grace?
Grace is a gift and a participation in the life of God himself.
It does not make us God, of course, but it does allow us to know who God truly is, to
enjoy friendship with God, and to know and love God as he is in himself.
Consequently, grace is something only God himself can give us, and it's something caused
in us by the Holy Trinity.
So, God is the author of grace.
That being said, God can use created realities
to communicate grace.
Aquinas calls these 'instrumental causes.'
The most important example is the sacred humanity of Christ.
God the Holy Trinity causes grace, but God gives grace in and through the human nature
of Jesus in his earthly life, actions, death, resurrection, and glorified activity.
So for example, Christ now in the glory of his
resurrected life as man, in his human heart and in his human mind wishes us to receive grace.
And when he does this, we do effectively receive that grace.
His human desire, however, is not the principle cause of our grace, but is the instrumental cause.
Christ wills to give us grace both divinely as God and humanly as man, and the human desire
is subordinate to an expressive of the divine will.
Sacraments can also be instrumental means
of grace.
They're means that Christ works through to sanctify us, and each of the seven Sacraments
has a distinct effect of grace.
Aquinas talks about the sacred humanity of Christ as a conjoined instrument, because
it is the humanity of God himself conjoined to the person of the Word.
And he speaks to the Sacraments as separated instruments.
They are not united to Christ per se, but they are instituted by Christ and he works
through them.
The Eucharist is obviously a particular example
because in the Eucharist, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.
In this case, the sacrament is both an instrument of grace and it contains the very source of
grace in itself, the Lord in his glorified life.
What are the effects of grace?
The three primary effects of grace are justification, sanctification or merit, and divinization
or union with God.
Let's talk about each of these briefly.
Aquinas teaches that justification occurs by grace, and it is something we cannot prepare
ourselves for or do by our own powers.
There is no human work or natural virtue that can dispose us to the gift of righteousness,
which makes us friends with God.
The reason for this is twofold.
First, we're not able to give ourselves what we don't have, and we don't naturally possess
elevation through the state of grace.
And second, we're wounded by sin and indisposed to the rightly ordered knowledge and love of God.
Justification then is a kind of new order
and righteousness created in us by the interactivity of grace, which reorients both the mind and
the heart toward God.
It reorients the mind by the grace of faith, and it reorients the heart or will by the
grace of hope and love.
Justification then effects a movement in the soul away from sinful attachments and toward
the primacy of the love of God.
This is why justification by grace is transformative according to Aquinas.
That is to say it changes us inwardly through the effects of faith, hope, and love, which
reorder our lives towards God.
It's not merely forensic or declarative.
Justification does occur by grace alone, not by natural works, but it does not occur merely
by faith alone or by faith with fiduciary trust.
Instead, justification occurs by the grace of faith, hope, and love acting upon the intellect
and the will.
The transformative power of love is an integral part of the process of justification.
What are merit and sanctification?
Aquinas says that in justification, God infuses into the soul supernatural habits of faith,
hope, and love.
This is a work he does without us gratuitously.
But once he has begun this work, we can cooperate with him freely performing acts of faith,
hope, and love.
And Aquinas calls these acts cooperative grace.
When we make an act of faith in the reality of Christ resurrected, for example, we do
so freely of ourselves, but only because God is first working in us.
So, we actually will to believe, and our belief is meritorious for our salvation.
But we can only perform this act as a gift of God.
Merits for Aquinas are themselves gifts of God, not merit works of human nature.
The merits in question are habitual acts that
proportionately dispose us to receive a reward.
The most important reward that the gospel speaks of is eternal life with God.
So, God's grace allows us to sanctify our lives by turning our lives habitually toward
God in our intentions and actions to prepare ourselves for eternal life.
Sanctification occurs as a person's life becomes
one of intense cooperation with the grace of Christ as we see illustrated, especially
in the lives of great saints, like Sts. Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Vincent de
Paul, or Teresa of Calcutta.
Divinization is simply union with God by grace
that can occur for the soul eventually after death.
If we die in a state of friendship with God, the term or endpoint of the life of grace
is the vision of God, the beatific vision.
Here, the soul passes from the regime of faith to that of intellectual perception, the intuitive
and immediate vision of the essence of God.
We don't understand God comprehensively in heaven, but we do see God face-to-face and
contemplate him by a grace that Aquinas calls the 'lumen gloriae,' the light of glory.
This vision of God is infinitely interesting
due to the depths and riches of God's perfection.
And in heaven, we possess God no longer by hope, but by an enduring union of love that cannot be lost.
Likewise in heaven, God fulfills all the desires of the heart in a higher way than any created reality can.
So, grace comes from God through Christ.
It leads to friendship with God in this life, and to be beatitude and possession of God in
the life to come.
We should ask God for grace, for the grace to cooperate with him in ways that are realistic
and meritorious, and for the grace of perseverance in view of eternal life.
For readings, podcasts, and more videos like this, go to Aquinas101.com.
While you're there, be sure to sign up for one of our free video courses on Aquinas.
And don't forget to like and share with your friends, because it matters what you think.