Grace

Ten reflections on grace are as follows: 

1.  Grace is God’s favor and love poured out generally on humankind, and on individuals – since God is gracious. 

2.  Grace is God’s forgiveness of sin – since God is merciful. 

3.  Grace is God’s indwelling within the person of faith. 

4.  Grace is God’s personal self-communication to humankind generally, and to each individual human being. It is God’s being-present within, as the fulfillment and salvation of human nature. 

5.  Grace is totally and absolutely gratuitous, and God’s communication of God’s own personal self. 

6.  Grace is synonymous with salvation; it constitutes union with God. 

7.  Grace – or God’s self-communication – responds to and overcomes sin and death. In relation to sin, God’s presence as grace is forgiveness and acceptance of humanity, and of each individual. In relation to death, grace is the foretaste of resurrection and the promise of eternal life. 

8.  Grace is Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God. 

9.  Grace may be interpreted in four ways as follows: 

a.  Grace is first and foremost God’s self-communication and presence to human existence. 

b.  The offer of grace is constitutive of the actual condition of human existence (God’s presence, as an offer of salvation, is part of the very condition of a human existence whose salvation God wills from the beginning). 

c.  The universality of grace exists on the basis of the universality of God’s saving will (the whole sphere of human life, even in its most secular aspects, is potentially “graced” which breaks down barriers separating the Church and the world, and unveils to Christian vision a kingdom of grace beyond the Church). 

d.  People do experience grace (in and as experiences of genuine self-transcendence). 

10.    The effects of grace include: 

a.  Freedom from sin. 

b.  Freedom to love. 

c.  Cooperative grace. 

d.  Union with God. 

Source : Robert Haight, “Grace”, in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. M. Downey (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 452-464. All ten points listed have been taken from this article.

Photo credit: Intellimon Ltd.