Pints With Aquinas - What Exactly is Grace Anyway? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

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Hello, my name is Fr. Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph and this is Pines of the Quinas. In this episode I'd like to talk about grace, specifically because grace is just the substance of Christian perfection, or grace is our sharing in the divine life itself. So we're inclined to talk about subjects that might seem a little more exciting at the outset like what can angels do and how might demons be involved and like what to say about this contemporary issue that might have us frustrated or otherwise angered but I think that it's important that we return to the bread and butter Christian themes

in so far as our own spiritual lives you know ride on the backs of just like themes so yeah let's get into. Talk a little bit about the grace. Okay. The word grace, or at least the word grace in Saint Thomas Aquinas's Latin, grazie, had three main senses or has three main senses. So first there's the sense that it's free, and you can think here of the word gratis.

That is to say it's given without cost or it's given without counting the cost. And then this leads us into the second description, which would be of a gift. Okay. And you can think here of, you know, like graciousness. We would consider those persons gracious who bestow the gift of their presence upon us. And then we could also think about it as thanks. You know, when you pray grace, you say a prayer of thanksgiving, also of blessing over the meal. So there's this threefold sense to grace, namely that it's freely given, that it's a gift of a certain sort, and that it's something that causes in us a kind of thanksgiving. And when we talk about the life of grace, we're usually talking about this second dimension, that is to say the gift given, which is our share in God's own life, which is our participation

in the life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But we also have to keep in mind the fact that it is freely given and that we are to render a certain thanks for it or that it has a kind of claim on our lives whereby we live and move in accord with that grace towards God and recognition of the gift. Okay, so when we talk about grace we're talking about a kind of habit. So you've probably heard this language of habit before specifically to describe the virtues. Now the virtues are a particular kind of habit. They are the habit that inform our doing or our acting. And the habit of grace is a habit that informs our being or our living. So the way that you might say that you're in the habit of being healthy, you might say that you're in the habit of

being graced. Because grace is kind of like health of the whole person. So you wouldn't say for instance, you know, I'm basically healthy except for the fact that I have pancreatic cancer. You're like, what? That means you're not healthy. So in order for you to be healthy, you have to be healthy whole and entire. So it can't be like despite the fact that or if you look past that, it's something that that takes into account the whole person.

Now you might have like a little hangnail or you might have like a blemish on your skin and we would still say that you're healthy because those things are accidental as it were or they're not essential. Whereas when we're talking about health, we're talking about everything that's essential to your health is present. So too with grace. Everything that's essential to your spiritual health is present when you're in a state of grace because you enjoy the gift of divine

filiation. That is to say, you're made a son or daughter of God, so you're adopted, as it were, into the very household of God. And grace cannot coexist with sin, so it has a way of pushing sin and vice to the periphery of our lives. Now, there are two senses in which we talk about virtues. I mean, there are lots of senses, but two main senses. We talk about imperfect virtue and then perfect virtue. When we talk about imperfect virtue, sometimes we're just talking about like a constitutional or a temperamental disposition. So you might have like a really strong frame and you would be constitutionally or temperamentally inclined to a certain courage or bravery. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have the perfect virtue of courage or bravery,

what we would call fortitude. It just means that you're disposed to it by virtue of, you know, what's going on. And so when we're talking about grace, there can be certain things in your life that are not in accord with the life of grace, but strictly speaking, you're in a relationship of divine filiation, of divine sonship. So there might be like a kind of imperfect vice still present. So by virtue of who you are and what you've done over the course of your life, you might still find it hard to drink to moderation or drink in moderation. So you might have a kind of temperamental or constitutional indisposition to temperance, but the grace of God still makes it such that you have the divine life at work within you

and you have the spiritual wherewithal to live the life of temperance even if your nature kind of pushes back or even if you find it difficult to live that way. So then what we're talking about here is a kind of health of the person which deals with the sickness of the person, which is to say sin by pushing it from our interior lives, by pushing it from our whole life as it were, and that this grace has a way of healing us and of elevating us. So we say it's a life, it's a participation in the divine life, so it's something organic, it's something with its own logic. It's something with its own tendency. And if we consent to and cooperate with it, it's going to have a way of healing us and

then of growing us. So we can think about the way that it heals concupiscence. Maybe you've heard this word before, concupiscence. It refers to the fact that given that we have sinned, right, the original sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, or our own personal sins, that the order which ought to be present in our lives is not present, or has been wounded, or has been kind of done violence to. And so we need to undertake the work of grace, right, receive that grace, and then work in accord with that grace, so as to heal what concupiscence has wounded or done violence to.

So when we talk about concupiscence, we're usually talking about an inclination to lower goods that displace higher goods. So it's like, oh, very shiny or tasty or sexy or whatever. And then we lose sight of the most important things in our lives. So grace has a way of healing us, opening our eyes or opening the eyes of our heart, as it were, so that we can see what is true and then inclining us towards those things. Because what it does is it equips us, or it kits us out, with everything that we need to live a supernatural life.

So by virtue of the fact that you've been created with a human nature, you have everything that you need to live a natural life. But by virtue of the fact that you have received this gift of grace, you now have everything that you need to live a supernatural life. Now mind you, it doesn't make you God in the strict sense. It doesn't change your nature. So God enjoys His beatitude as just part of who He is. Whereas we enjoy His beatitude as something that's conceded to us, that's given to us, into which we're welcome, that we have to operate in order to attain to. So it's never going to be as natural for us as it is for him, and yet still, we have everything that we need in order to attain to it by knowing and by loving specifically.

Okay. So then, maybe we can draw just a couple of distinctions then amongst different graces as a way to solidify what we have learned so far and answer some questions. So when we talk about grace, usually we're talking about sanctifying grace, this spiritual health of the whole person. The language that St. Thomas uses is, Grazia Gratum Faciens. So that is grace making one pleasing. And this would be the grace of justification, the grace of sanctification over the course of one's life as you

act in accord with the gift that has been given to you. We would associate this, of course, with the Most Blessed Trinity because this gift that we receive of grace is given to us by the persons of the Most Blessed Trinity. So, you know, from all eternity, the Father begets the Son, and the Father and the Son breathe forth the Holy Spirit. We refer to these as the processions of the persons of the Most Blessed Trinity. But these processions are also the template, or they're also the backdrop of certain missions. So the Son is sent to creation, or to creatures, specifically to us and to angels, and then the Holy Spirit is sent to us and to angels. And we see this first invisibly, so the Son is sent to our souls as the author of sanctification, the Holy Spirit is sent to our souls as the gift of sanctification, but then these invisible

missions are picked out for us by visible missions. So the Son is sent visibly in the incarnation, and the Holy Spirit is sent visibly in the baptism, with the descent of the dove, in the transfiguration with the enveloping cloud, in the Lord's breath in John 20 when He breathes on His apostles and says, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven, and then at the upper room again in Acts 2, 1-2 with the descent of the Spirit in tongues of fire over the head of the apostles. So the persons of the Most Blessed Trinity are sent to us so that we can abide with them, so that they can abide in us, so that they can dwell in us as in a temple. So when we're talking about grace, we're talking about the

welcoming of the person because it's not just this new created thing, which is to say our sharing in the divine life, but it's also the person himself, in the case of the Son, in the case of the Holy Spirit, the person himself is sent, and we welcome the person, and we entertain the person, and we commune with the person. This grace is meant ultimately to kind of be spelled out or articulated further in our lives by virtues, right? We think here of faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, and other virtues besides, which are usually nested under those virtues, and also the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So with the virtues, we act according to a human rule, and then with the gifts of the

Holy Spirit, we act according to a divine rule. So it's a way of becoming more receptive or open to the inspirations or instinct of God Himself. So grace, it's the sanctifying grace, but then it has these further effects of the virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We can add the beatitudes and the fruits of the Holy Spirit, but we'll set those aside for right now. Now, there are other senses in which we use grace. So sanctifying grace is this abiding grace, this dwelling grace, this grace which takes up residence within. There are other graces which are more punctual, which are kind of like little pinpricks which spur us on in a particular

direction or give us the get-up-and-go to perform a certain spiritual act. We refer to these as actual graces. All right, so these actual graces might be to help us in that, you know, initial act of justification to consent to and cooperate with the sovereign work of God. Or they could be further actual graces along the way of our sanctification, so kind of giving us that initial input energy to perform an act of charity or to posit an act of faith. Other graces that we will sometimes refer to would be like charismatic graces. So you can think here of the enumeration in 1 Corinthians 12, where the Apostle Paul goes through word of wisdom, word of knowledge, mighty deeds, tongues,

discernment of tongues, discernment of spirits, prophecy is the one to be striven after most. So these graces, they're not so much graces for your own sanctification as they are for the upbuilding of the church. So they don't make you holy, nor are they intended for all persons in the church, or it doesn't seem that they are, but that when they're exercised in leading to the upbuilding of the church, they testify to the fact that the work of God is on offer here, that God is doing something in sovereign fashion, and that it's worth inquiring into. So that kind of captures two senses in which we'll typically use grace. As a habit, as something, a stable and permanent possession that we act out of, that we even use, we can say that, we use it.

Or as a kind of motion, so an impetus, an input energy, something that sets our feet in motion, or that sets our feet to dancing, to speak somewhat metaphorically. So those would be the two senses in which we typically use it. And I would just say like a last point here with the knowledge of grace is it's complicated, it's difficult because grace is invisible. So it's hard to know what's graced and what's not. It's hard to know if we're in a state of grace or not, because it's really difficult to take your own spiritual temperature. Now, mind you, you can kind of judge that grace is probably present on the basis of

the fact that certain things which people in a state of grace would do are being done. You know, so you can take it on the basis of certain evidential signs that grace is operative, that grace is at work, and it seems that grace is having its way. So in our own spiritual lives, we're trying to work in accord with this grace, right? To welcome this grace, to consent and cooperate with this grace, to live continually out of this grace so that it can take deeper hold on our lives. Because while you're given a grace, it's for us to appropriate it. It's for us to permit that grace, that organic life to plunge the roots of its own dynamism into

the soil of our spirit, into the soil of our soul. So that way we can participate in it, share in it more intensely, and then have it extend more extensively to further aspects of our existence, which we might otherwise at the moment be blind to or just not alive to. So yeah, that's a little thumbnail sketch then of the life of grace, what it is, and what it does. So this is Pines of the Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell, and get other updates as they come forth. If you haven't yet, also check out God's Blending, a podcast to which I contribute with four

other Dominican friars, and we've got quite a few things which pertain to the life of grace and your own spiritual growth. We've also got a retreat coming up November 3rd through 5th in Malvern, Pennsylvania for young adults. That's people 21 through 33. And it's going to be on Pope Benedict XVI's Truth and Tolerance. So it's going to be about, you know, the unique mediatorship of our Lord Jesus Christ, world religions, religious pluralism, things like that.

So a kind of intellectual retreat. And then what else? I think that's most of it. Oh, Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage, last announcements. Coming up September 30th, Washington D.C. at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. So it's going to be a jammer. I'm going to give a couple talks, one on the Blessed Virgin Mary and one on the Rosary,

and I just finished writing them. I might still tinker with them, but I think you'll enjoy it, and I think you'll be educated and edified. So that's what I got. All right, no more of my prayers for you. Please pray for me, and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with Aquinas.