Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 341- Part V.

      

YOUCAT Question n. 341 – Part V. Can someone earn heaven by good works?

(Youcat answer - repeated) No. No man can gain heaven merely by his own efforts. The fact that we are saved is God’s grace, pure and simple, which nevertheless demands the free cooperation of the individual.    

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 2011 a) The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God. Grace, by uniting us to Christ in active love, ensures the supernatural quality of our acts and consequently their merit before God and before men. The saints have always had a lively awareness that their merits were pure grace. After earth's exile, I hope to go and enjoy you in the fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven.

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) Although it is grace and faith through which we are saved, nevertheless, our good works ought to show the love produced by God’s action in us.

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 2011 b)  I want to work for your love alone.... In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is blemished in your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in your own justice and to receive from your love the eternal possession of yourself [St. Therese of Lisieux, "Act of Offering" in Story of a Soul, tr. John Clarke (Washington Dc: ICS, 1981), 277]. 

(The next question is: Are we all supposed to become “saints”?)