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:
“on thy brow
Shall sit a nobler grace than now.
Deep in the brightness of the skies
The thronging years in glory rise.
And, as they fleet,
Drop strength and riches at thy feet.”
—William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“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)