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:
“The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keep us from discovering the faults of our friends.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“I remember when I was first assigned to jets. I said to the colonel, “Colonel, I joined this man’s air force to fly an airplane. But nobody’s gonna hitch me to no Roman candle.””
—Kurt Neumann (1906–1958)
“Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)