Monday, September 11, 2017
Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 340.
(Youcat answer) God’s grace is freely
bestowed on a person, and it seeks and summons him to respond in complete
freedom. Grace does not compel. God’s love wants our free assent.
A deepening through CCC
(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).
Reflecting
and meditating
(Youcat comment) One can also
say No to the offer of grace. Grace, nevertheless, is not something external or
foreign to man; it is what he actually yearns for in his deepest freedom. In
moving us by his grace, God anticipates man’s free response.
(CCC
Comment)
(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). (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.
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