Where shall we go now? How about Alan in Burlington, Vermont. Alan, are you there
with us? Yeah, can you guys hear me ok? Yes we can, thank you Alan! Your question for Jimmy.
Yeah Jimmy, thanks for taking my call. I have a question on grace.
So we've seen throughout history that it seems like God
seems to favor some people over others. You know, the greatest example of this
being the Blessed Virgin Mary; but at the same time, we know that
God is a just God, and that he loves all of us equally. But how could a just God,
who loves us all equally, seem to favor some people with more grace than
others, when we know that grace is required for our holiness and salvation?
Well, in a couple of ways—there are, I guess, at least a couple things to say here. The
first one is: God gives all of us sufficient grace to enable us to be
saved. So it's not like there are people who
God just decided "Eh. I don't care about this person. I don't love this person. I'm not
gonna give them the grace they need to be saved." He gives everybody the grace
that they need to be saved, and it's up to them, then: do they choose to
respond to that grace? This is something that was mentioned, for example, in
section 22 of the Vatican II document "Gaudium et Spes," which says that, in a
way, because God wills all men to be saved and Christ died for all men, we
need to believe that the Holy Spirit makes it possible, in a way known to God,
for every person to be associated with the Paschal mystery, by which
they mean Christ's saving death that occurred at Passover. And so
the Holy Spirit makes it possible for everybody to be able to receive the
benefits of Christ's death, and thus be saved. In terms of: do
some people get more grace than others? Yes. That's also clear in the New
Testament, and it's clear from ordinary experience. Some people are in better
life situations than others. And in this regard, what can be said is: we need to
apply a principle that Jesus himself applied, which is: those people who have
received more benefits are going to be expected to do more with them, and
consequently, if you have received fewer benefits, you will not be expected to do
as much with them. And so, "Those who have
received much, much is expected; those who have received little, little is expected."
And so even though God may give one person a lot of benefits, either of the
spiritual or the natural order, if that person gets a lot of benefits, they're
expected to produce a lot of fruit with that. And if they just kinda don't,
they're not going to get a big reward. On the other hand, if someone has not been
given a lot of benefits, but they do you be productive with what they've been
given, then that person will get an even bigger reward. And so it's kind of like
the widow's mite principle, where the widow who puts in the two small lepta,
two small copper coins, Jesus says she, spiritually speaking, put
in more than all the others who were putting in much larger amounts, and so
her reward, even though it's financially small compared to the others,
her spiritual reward will be much larger. And in the same way, if you have limited
graces in your life but you use them well, your reward will be even bigger
than if you had received big graces and not done that much with them.