Grace in Roman Catholicism
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Grace is not just God's loving kindness, favor or mercy, but God’s divine life itself, which enables the work of Christ to flow through us. Through Adam, we have been dis-graced and separated from God, and in Christ, we are restored to grace and reconciled to God. Through grace people can become new creations, "partakers of the divine nature." Justification is by grace alone, through faith working in love. The essence of grace is that it is a freely offered gift, normatively given through the sacraments, particularly baptism, the Holy Eucharist, and reconciliation. Individuals do not earn or deserve Sanctifying Grace (see below), and as such cannot claim it as a right, though they can merit Actual Graces (the Latin word 'meritum' meaning 'Reward') that lead one further on the journey of Sanctification to the perfect holiness of Heaven.
Read more about this topic: Grace (Christianity)
Famous quotes containing the words grace, roman and/or catholicism:
“I thus could not live, and I admitted it, unless on the entire earth, all creatures, or at least the greatest number, were turned toward me, eternally vacant, deprived of an independent life, ready at any moment to respond to my call, given to sterility until the day I deigned to grace them with my light. In short, for me to live happily, it was necessary for those chosen by me not to live at all.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft. Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being too much like all the other religions; Protestantism of being insufficiently like a religion at all. Hence Plato, with his transcendent Forms, is the doctor of Protestants; Aristotle, with his immanent Forms, the doctor of Catholics.”
—C.S. (Clive Staples)