The Cause of Grace

Only God can make a man a sharer in the divine nature. Only God can bestow the gift of God. Now, grace is “a participation in the divine nature”; grace is a gift of God. Hence, God alone is the true cause of grace.

Grace which helps move us to good, in being or action,is all from God, and not in any way from ourselves. Even the preparation or disposition for grace is entirely from God. By accepting cooperating grace, we enter into the disposition which prepares us for the receiving of sanctifying or habitual grace.

In so far as the human will can thus (by acceptingcooperating grace and using it) make preparation for grace, it can set up no necessity or demand that grace should actually follow upon the preparation. For no merely human preparation can adequately and compellingly dispose the soul for supernatural gifts. But in so far as man’s preparation is from God, grace follows it infallibly.

Sanctifying grace is a greater or lesser gift (not in itself, for in itself it admits of no degrees), according to the capacity and readiness of the receiver. Yet, since God alone can effectively dispose the soul to receive grace, it is God who is truly “the measure of grace.” St. Paul (Eph. 4:7) says,“To every one of us is given grace according to the measure ofthe giving of Christ.”

Man cannot know for certain that he has the grace of God unless God reveal the fact to him. Merely natural knowledge cannot give certitude of a supernatural fact or experience. But man may have an imperfect knowledge of the fact that he has grace; thatis, he may have justified conjectural knowledge, based on signs, such as delight in the thought of God, a contempt for merely material and worldly goods, and the fact that he is not conscious of mortal sin.