425. What is the relationship between grace and human freedom?
(Comp 425) Grace precedes, prepares and
elicits our free response. It responds to the deep yearnings of human freedom,
calls for its cooperation and leads freedom toward its perfection.
“In brief”
(CCC 2022) The divine initiative in the work of grace
precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace responds to the
deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate with it, and
perfects freedom.
To deepen and
explain
(CCC 2001) The preparation
of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter
is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through
faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us
what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating with
our will began by working so that we might will it" (St. Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17: PL 44,
901): Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works,
for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be
healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes
before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified;
it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may
always live with God: for without him we can do nothing (St. Augustine, De natura et gratia, 31: PL 44, 264).
Reflection
(CCC 2002) God's free initiative demands man's free response, for God has created
man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know
him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God
immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a
longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of
"eternal life" respond, beyond all hope, to this desire: If at the
end of your very good works…, you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell
by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed
"very good" since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in
you on the sabbath of eternal life (St. Augustine, Conf. 13, 36, 51: PL 32, 868; cf. Gen 1:31).
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