By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.

— 1 Corinthians 15:10

Either before you arrive or as you wait for class to begin, find this short passage from Sacred Scripture in your Bible or through an online search. Reading it will prepare you for this week’s material.

— John 15:1–11

O God our Father, whose mercies are new every morning and who gives immeasurably more than we ask for or imagine, shower your grace upon us, heal the effects of sin in us, increase charity in our hearts, and strengthen us for good works. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

As you watch the video lesson, refer to these key highlights. Feel free to use the space provided to take notes.

• Grace is a sharing in God’s life, a spiritual gift that he freely gives to us. Grace makes us partakers of the divine nature and children of God.

• We need grace in order to be saved. We cannot reach heaven solely by our own human strength.

• Grace moves us to conversion. This can be found in the Scriptures and in stories of conversion.

• Grace heals the effects of sin and justifies the sinner. Grace brings about spiritual transformation and elevates our human nature.

• Sanctifying grace (habitual grace) makes us holy and pleasing to God.

• The Holy Trinity dwells within us by grace. We participate in God’s own knowledge and love.

Wisdom of the Saints

God dwells spiritually as in a family home in the just, whose minds are capable of God through knowledge and love, through faith which operates through charity.

— St. Thomas Aquinas

Take a moment to go through these questions with the group. For larger classes, divide them up into partners. Answers are provided to assist you in leading discussion.

1. What is grace and why do we need it?
   Grace is a sharing in God’s life, a spiritual gift he freely gives us in the depths of our souls. We need grace in order to be justified; that is, healed from sin and made friends with God. Grace is necessary for salvation. No one can get to heaven solely on his own moral strength and will power.

2. List some of the effects of grace.
   Grace moves sinners to conversion and heals the wounds of sin (an “actual” or “moving” grace).

Grace elevates human nature to be capable of supernatural acts of faith, hope, and love (“sanctifying” or “habitual” grace).

By grace, God makes us children of God who participate or share in the divine nature. Grace makes us better images and children of God and true dwelling places of the Trinity.

1. What is the difference between actual and sanctifying grace?
   Actual grace moves or prompts us to a particular action.

Sanctifying grace is a stable disposition of grace that makes us holy and pleasing to God. God transforms us from within through sanctifying grace and gives us the ability to make acts of faith, hope, and charity. Those in a state of sanctifying grace can merit a further increase in grace according to God’s will and promise.

1. What does it mean to say the Holy Trinity “dwells in us”?
   The Trinity dwells in us by grace. The Son and the Holy Spirit are sent into our minds and hearts through faith and charity. We know God by sharing in the Word (the Son) and we love God by possessing the Holy Spirit who is divine Love. The Son and Spirit put us in relation to the Father.

Catechism Connection

The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.

— CCC 1999

Discuss these questions with the group, pair them with a partner, or ask them to meditate on their own.

1. Have you ever decided to grow closer to God by just “trying harder”? Were you successful? If not, how do you think the Catholic teaching on grace could help you?

2. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (Jn 15:4). Relate this to the teaching on grace. Do you desire to abide in the grace of God? What fruit do you think you can bear with God’s grace?

3. Do you think this teaching on grace could benefit your prayer life? How so?

After concluding your group discussion, return to watch the second video where converts to the Catholic faith discuss their conversion and how they live today as Catholics.

Rome to Home

In the very act of justification, together with the remission of sins, man receives through Jesus Christ, into whom he is inserted, the gifts of faith, hope, and charity, all infused at the same time.

— Council of Trent, Session 6, chap. 7

• Pelagianism: A heresy in the Church that claimed human beings could reach heaven through their own moral strength and will power.
• Justification: The transformation of the sinner by God’s grace.
• State of (Sanctifying) Grace: That state of friendship with God where he gives us a habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that…enables the soul to live with him and to act by his love. Those in a state of sanctifying grace have the virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Baptism infuses sanctifying grace into the soul. If it is lost through mortal sin, it can be recovered through sacramental confession. Thomas Aquinas says that sanctifying grace gives us a “participation in the divine nature.”

Indwelling of the Trinity: The dwelling of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the soul by grace.

God’s Word

If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

— John 14:23

O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me to become utterly forgetful of myself so that I may establish myself in you, as changeless and calm as though my soul were already in eternity. Let nothing disturb my peace nor draw me forth from you, O my unchanging God, but at every moment may I penetrate more deeply into the depths of your mystery. Give peace to my soul; make it your heaven, your cherished dwelling-place and the place of your repose. Let me never leave you there alone, but keep me there, wholly attentive, wholly alert in my faith, wholly adoring and fully given up to your creative action. Amen.

—Prayer of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity

This serves as a review of the material that your students can read after each class, but it may be helpful for you to read as well. Consider reading it before each class to better prepare you for group discussion.

The Power of God’s Grace

The word grace has already been used throughout this program, but grace is so important that it deserves a special focus. Put simply, grace is a sharing in God’s life. It is a spiritual gift that God freely gives to us in the depths of our souls. Through grace we become children of God and participate in the divine nature. We become dwelling places of the Trinity.

Grace is not a “thing,” like a coin handed to us by God; rather, we are speaking about how God moves us, heals us, raises us up, and transforms us from within, really changing us so that we receive a share in his supernatural divine life and become capable of living as his adopted sons and daughters. It is the action of God in us (with which we also cooperate) and the way God’s love is received in our souls.

The power of grace is vast. When beginning to learn about the moral teaching of the Catholic faith—the way of life to which God calls his followers—it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Some might think, “How is it possible to live this way?” The Lord responds as he responded to St. Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:9). God’s grace makes it possible to live up to God’s call and to observe all of his commandments. Not only that, by his grace, God really helps us so that we will be truly happy and will flourish as we grow in the life of holiness. Of course, this does not mean that we will never encounter failures, whether small or big, but it does mean that God will never abandon us and will always be ready to heal and strengthen us if we fall.

Often people think that going to heaven is something we can accomplish through our own human powers. Pelagianism, a heresy in the early Church, held that human beings could reach heaven through their own moral strivings. Against this, the Catholic faith strongly maintains that we need God’s grace. It is impossible for us to get to heaven by our own…power, no matter how hard we try. The relationship between God and man was ruptured by the original sin of our first parents. We add to the wound of original sin by committing our own personal sins. But through his passion, death, and resurrection, Jesus opened up a new avenue to friendship with God through the life of grace. Grace comes to us through the saving action of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Church teaches that grace has the power to do several things:

By grace, God moves sinners to conversion. God is the one who takes the initiative in our spiritual life. The Gospels show us that Christ’s presence and words moved sinners to repentance. For example, Zaccheus and the Good Thief were moved not just by seeing Christ but through the saving action of grace at work in their hearts (see Lk 19:8; 23:42). When St. Peter preached on Pentecost day, people were cut to the heart by the grace of conversion (see Acts 2:37). Many people can tell you stories of their own conversion and how they felt God moving them at particular moments.

Grace elevates our human nature. God’s grace enables us to do things that would otherwise never be humanly possible. The saints bear witness to this effect of grace. For example, the martyrs manifested heroic endurance and the founders of religious orders accomplished extraordinary deeds. However, by God’s grace every Christian is able to do things beyond the power of human nature, such as believe in God’s supernatural revelation and love him as a friend.

There are different types of grace. When God moves us to action by grace, we call it actual grace. For example, God might move an agnostic to slip into the back of a church or to pick up a Bible. God might inspire a convicted murderer to make an act of hope to trust that God can and will forgive him. God might prompt you to make a spontaneous act of charity toward someone you find unpleasant.

For the Christian, the life of grace is not limited to actual graces God gives us here and there. In addition to these “moving” graces, God gives us another type of grace, habitual grace, which is a stable supernatural disposition or quality that God infuses into our souls to elevate them, giving us a participation or share in the life of God—or, as Scripture says, we “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4). This type of grace is also called “sanctifying grace” since, by this interior spiritual transformation, God makes us holy (from the Latin sanctus) and pleasing to him. Someone who has this stable spiritual disposition of friendship with God is sometimes said to “be in a state of grace.” At baptism, one receives an infusion of sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace is lost through mortal sin but can be restored by the sacrament of confession.
Learning about sanctifying grace shows us that, for the Christian, grace transforms and suffuses the whole of life. God’s grace does not merely cover over our sins, nor does it only push us along. Grace is not just a decree of God that we are now pleasing to him. Rather, we mean that, by grace, God really transforms us from within, giving us a share in his divine life. Through sanctifying grace, he gives us the power not just to occasionally do supernatural things but to do them “at will” by giving us a stable “habit” or disposition for them. Sanctifying grace always includes an elevation of our natural human powers of knowing and loving by the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity. God wants us to be able to make acts of faith, hope, and charity spontaneously and frequently. The Christian soul is called to constantly believe, hope, and love.

Sanctifying grace can increase. One of the main aims of our Christian life is to grow in grace each day. While grace is always God’s free gift, God teaches us that, by his will and promise, there are things we can do to merit a further gift of grace and dispose ourselves to an increase in grace. We never deserve or merit an increase of grace in the strict sense. However, God has promised grace to us if we do what he asks. By God’s own arrangement, he increases the grace we receive when we participate in the sacraments, especially in confession and the Eucharist. Personal prayer and works of charity can also lead to a further gift of the Lord’s grace to us. Sanctifying grace is the beginning or “seed” of eternal life. Just as a seed is the same being as the plant it grows into, so, too, if we persevere in God’s grace, our Christian life will flower into a heavenly life of communion with God.

Closely connected to the doctrine of sanctifying grace is the indwelling of the Trinity. The Holy Trinity dwells within us by grace. It is very consoling to know that mysteriously God not only gives his gifts but also gives himself in the depths of our souls. “He who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are sent invisibly into our minds and hearts to strengthen them. We know God by sharing in his own eternal Word (the Son), and we love God through possessing the Holy Spirit who is divine Love. The Son and the Spirit pu…us in contact with the Father. By dwelling in us and reproducing the life of the Trinity within us, God makes us better images of himself. We manifest his goodness and glory.

Journet, Charles. The Meaning of Grace. Scepter, 1997.
Martinez, Luis. The Sanctifier. Pauline Books & Media, 2003.