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 GRACE

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GRACE

grace must come to the rescue of its incapacity and supply the deficient powers, without which no super- natural activity is possible. Actual grace thus becomes a special causal principle which communicates to im- potent nature moral, and especially physical, powers.

Grace, as a moral cause, presupposes the existence of obstacles which render the work of salvation so dif- ficult that their removal is morally impossible without special Divine help. Grace must be brought into operation as healing grace (gratia sanans, medicinalis) ; free will, bent towards the earth and weakened by concupiscence, is yet filled with love of good and hor- ror of e\'il. The consciousness of the necessity of this moral influence maj' become so perfect that we beg of God the grace of a violent victory over our evil na- ture; witness the celebrated prayer of the Church: " Ad te nostras, etiam rebelles, compelle propitius vol- untates" (Vouchsafe to compel our wills to Thee, albeit they resist). In the ordinary course of things the Divine inspiration of joy in virtue and aversion from sin will, no doubt, methodically lead to the free performance of salutary acts ; but the moral influence of grace can effect the temporary control of freedom in the sinner. The sudden conversion of the Apostle Paul is an illustration of this. It will be readily un- derstood that the above-mentioned triumph over the obstacles to salvation demands in itself a grace which is natural only in substance, but supernatural in mode. Hence many theologians require even for the so-called state of pure nature (which never ex- isted) such natural graces as are mere remedies against the fames peccati of natural concupiscence. The end of supernatural bliss and the consequently necessary endowment with supernatural means of grace would not have existed in this state {status iiaturm puree), but the disastrous results of an evil tendency unbridled would have been experienced to the same e.xtent as after the fall.

More important than the moral causality of grace is its physical causality, for man must also receive from God the physical power to perform salutary works. Without it, activity in the order of salvation is not only more diflScult and laborious, it is altogether im- possible. The feet of a child, to draw a comparison from actual life, mav be so weak that a mere moral in- fluence, such as the holding out of a beautiful toy, will not suffice to enable it to walk without the physical support of the mother — the use of the leading-strings. The latter situation is the one in which man is placed with regard to supernatural activity.

From the question which is to be discussed later, and %vhich regards the metaphysical necessity of grace for all salutary acts, whether of an easy or difficult na- ture, it follows, with irresistible logic, that the incapac- ity of nature cannot be ascribed solely to a mere weakened condition and moral difficulties resulting from sin, but that it must be attributed also, and prin- cipally, to physical inability. The communication of the physical power to the soul admits, theologically, of only one interpretation, namely, that grace raises the faculties of the soul (intellect and will) above their natural constitutior into a supernatural sphere of being, and thus ren'lers them capable of substantially supernatural operations. The reason why, through our inner consciousness, we can gain no psychological knowledge of this higher activity of the soul lies in the fact that our self-consciousness extends solely to the acts, and in no wise to the substance, of the soul. From this same fact arises the philosophical necessity of proving the spirituality, the immortality, and the very existence of the human soul from the character- istic nat'ire of its activity. Inexorable theological logic postulates the supernatural nature of the acts tending towards our salvation, because theological faith, for example, "the beginning, foundation, and source of all justification", must certainly be of the same supernatural order as the intuitive vision of God

to which it ultimately leads. The necessity of the physical causality of grace, as is readily seen, is nowise dependent on the e.xisteuce of concupiscence, but re- mains just as imperative for our first parents in their state of innocence and for the angels subject to no evil tendency. Actual grace, therefore, considered under this aspect, bears the name of "elevating grace" (gratia elevans), though not in a sense which would exclude from it the possibihty of simultaneously fulfilling the moral function of healing grace in the present state of man. It is only after these considerations that the comprehension of the nature of actual grace in all its relations becomes possible, that we may say, with Perrone: Actual grace is that unmerited interior as- sistance which God, in virtue of the merits of Christ, confers upon fallen man in order to strengthen, on the one hand, his infirmity resulting from sin and, on the other, to render him capable, by elevation to the su- pernatural order, of supernatural acts of the soul, so that he may attain justification, persevere in it to the end, and thus enter into everlasting hfe.

(b) The Logical Division of actual grace should enu- merate all the kinds to which the definition is uni- versally applicable. If we adopt the different faculties of the soul as our principle of division, we shall have three kinds: graces of the intellect, of the will, and of the sensitive faculties. With regard to the consent of the will we distinguish two pairs of graces: first, preventing and co-operating; then efficacious and merely sufficient grace. It must be immediately shown that all these graces are no arbitrarily in- vented entities, but actually existing realities.

(a) Graces of the Different Faculties of the Soul. — : The illuminating grace of the intellect (gratia illunvina- tionis, illustralionis) first presents itself for considera- tion. It is that grace which in the work of salvation suggests good thoughts to the intellect. This may happen in a twofold manner, either mediately or immediately. The existence of mediate graces of the mmd is not only vouched for a priori by the presence of merely external graces, as when a stirring sermon or the sight of the crucifix forces the sinner to earnest reflection ; it is also explicitly attested by Holy Writ, where the " commandment of the Lord " is represented as "enlightening the eyes" (Ps. xviii, 9), and the ex- ternal example of Christ as a model for our imita- tion (I Pet., ii, 21). But, as this mediate grace need neither interrupt the psychological course of the law governing the association of ideas nor be of a strictly supernatural nature, its sole object will be to prepare unostentatiously the way for a grace of greater im- portance and necessity, immediate illuminating grace. In the latter, the Holy Ghost Himself through imme- diate elevation and penetration of the powers of the mind prompts the soul and manifests to it in a super- natural light the eternal truths of salvation. Though our sacred discourses be perfect masterpieces of elo- quence, though our picture of the wounds of the cru- cified Saviour be ever so vivid and realistic, they alone can never be the first step towards the conver- sion of a sinner, except when God by a vigorous im- pulse stirs the heart and, according to an expression of St. Fulgentius (Ep. xvii, De incarn. et grat., n. 67), "opens the ear of the interior man". St. Paul ac- knowledges, also, that the faith which his own preach- ing and that of his disciple Apollo had sown in Corinth, and which, under their "planting and watering" (mediate grace of preaching), had taken root, would have miserably perished, had not God himself given "the increase". (See I Cor., iii, 6: "Ego plantavi, Apollo rigavit, sed Deus incrementum dedit.") Among the Fathers of the Church none has more strongly em- phasized the fruitlessness of preaching without interior illumination than the Doctor of Grace, Augustine, who says among other things; " Magisteria forinsecus adjutoria quaedam sunt et admonitiones; cathe- dram in ccelo habet qui corda tenet" ("Instruction