The Necessity of Grace

1. A creature depends upon God for its existence and its ability to act, and also for the exercise of its ability to act. Man’sintellect therefore needs God to know anything whatever. Butman’s intellect needs God in a special way to know truths that lie beyond its natural range. To grasp such truths, the mind of man requires supernatural light in addition to its own natural light. This supernatural light is the light of grace.

2. Man’s will also needs supernatural aid to choose and accomplish supernatural good. This aid is a strength added to the natural strength of the will, and bestowed on the will as a gift of God. The name of this gift is grace.

3. Speaking absolutely, man can love God above all things without grace, for this is the very drive and purpose of his nature. But man is fallen; sin has hurt his nature; he can nolonger achieve what ought to be naturally attainable. Therefore,even to love God naturally above all things, man requires supernatural grace. Certainly, to love God supernaturally above all things, man requires grace, and would require it even ifhe had retained his primal innocence.

4. Man cannot fulfill the Commandments of the Law without the help of grace. Before the fall, innocent man could, without grace, perform the works required by the Commandments, but couldnot perform them out of supernatural charity as their perfection demands. Therefore, man, innocent as well as fallen, needs the grace of God to fulfill the law of God.

5. Hence it is clear that man cannot merit heaven by hisunaided efforts. Man labors for a supernatural end, and such an end is, by the very force of ideas and words, outside the range and grasp of natural powers: the natural cannot compass the supernatural. To win heaven, man must have divine grace.

6. Indeed, man cannot, without grace, even prepare himself to receive grace. To prepare himself for grace, man must be turned to God in a supernatural way; for this supernatural turning to God,supernatural aid is required; grace is required.

7. Man cannot rise from sin without grace. By serious sin,man stains his soul, brings disorder into his natural powers, andincurs the debt of everlasting punishment. And man cannot, without grace, remove these evil consequences of grave sin.

8. Nor, without grace, can a man avoid sin. For the fall of Adam has left man prone to sin, and has dulled his natural powers of alertness and ready opposition to its attacks. Without supernatural aid, man must certainly succumb to some of the assaults of temptation. Hence, man needs grace to avoid sin.

9. Once he has attained grace, man is not thereby permanently equipped for doing good and avoiding evil. He needs newgraces, constantly supplied. True, once grace is attained,man’s nature is healed and made capable of meritorious acts;his soul has the state or habit of sanctifying grace. But, in addition to this habitual grace, man needs special helps to meet continual emergencies, unruly tendencies and urges in his nature, darkness of mind and weakness of will in particular cases where he needs to know what to do and needs prompt strength to doit valorously. Man in the state of sanctifying grace needs an unfailing supply of actual graces. Just so, a man in robust health needs an unfailing supply of food and the other things that will keep him in health.

10. Perseverance in God’s grace to the end of life requires the sustained giving of graces by almighty God, and is itself a special grace. The fact that a man has obtained grace is not a guarantee that he will never lose it, nor is it guarantee that, if lost, grace will be recovered and possessed at the time of death. Yet it is of paramount importance that man have grace at the moment of death. He is required to “persevere unto the end,” ifhe is to be saved. Hence man needs the special gift and grace of God which is called “the grace of final perseverance,“and for this gift and grace he must ever pray.