Does God love...or is God love? The answer is both. The gift of love is the gift of Himself to us. We decide and reveal, by how we actually live our lives, by how well we love, whether or not we continue to value the gift.
This is true, I guess. It sounds very industrious to me, so I am not entirely comfortable with it.
Industrious-as opposed to lazy, maybe?
While Protestantism seeks to preserve the idea that our salvation depends on God, alone: ‘all to Him I owe’-that there’s nothing we contribute-it gets fuzzy as to whether or not man is still obligated to be personally righteous-or even if that’s possible. And another, related, question is whether or not or to what degree man's
will is involved in the matter of justification and salvation.
In Catholicism, centuries ago, the church solidly laid down its teachings on grace-that man cannot even begin to move himself towards God apart from His initiative and work in us. But that at anytime throughout that process or walk with God man can nonetheless
resist that grace, and turn away from Him. Our justice or righteousness is all the more confirmed, grown, and complete to the extent that
we come to will it also. Faith, hope, and love, and the fruits of those virtues are always gifts, as well as choices-and continuous, daily choices. They produce that fruit as they’re embraced and exercised.
I think we can look at it this way. God wants something for-and also
from us-otherwise the justifying of man wouldn’t be taking all the time and patient work that God has expended down through the centuries in cultivating and preparing man by revelation and grace for the ultimate revelation and grace who is Christ. God seeks to elicit from man a will that is reconciled to and aligned with His own, perfect will- for our highest good. And just as Jesus worked, we pick up our cross and follow and cooperate with Him now in that work, with His grace. But as this happens, we do it
more and more willingly, out of the love we gain for Him and neighbor. Is faith nothing more than a reprieve from the obligation for man to be righteous, or is it the authentic
means to it, affording us, with whatever time and other gifts we’re given, the ability with which to work out our salvation together with He who works in us?
For myself it’s of great interest and comfort to know that God’s purpose was never to punish a bunch of worthless sinners that He’s angry at unless they toe the line, defined however we want to define “toeing the line”, but first of all to
produce something, something far greater than He began with, to patiently bring us into a perfection that only He knows with certainty. And that, necessarily, by and according to His wisdom and will, involves
our wills. God’s purpose has always been man’s best interest: He
covets our beatitude, our happiness, and, incidentally, love is the only valid and lasting means to that happiness. He just knows that fact better than we do. Love is both a command, and a grace, a blessing, as it’s received and embraced and "owned".
Doesn't R. Çatholicism teach that grace is created though? I think that's what I am hung up about.
Ok, the west likes to get “wordy” at times-to consider and to explain things as exhaustively as possible-not a bad thing in and of itself but not all of these are necessarily
de fide, articles of faith BTW. Anyway, the CC has taught about uncreated and created grace. I don’t think those terms are emphasized in current teachings, at least on the level of catechesis. Uncreated grace is God, Himself, and His life that He gives us. Created graces are said to be those specific acts, in time, having a beginning IOW, by which He acts, intervenes, works in us and within our world to bring man to Himself. Teachings on grace in the catechism include the following:
1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is
favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46
1997 Grace is a
participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.
1998 This vocation to eternal life is
supernatural. It depends entirely on God's gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other creature.47
1999 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. It is the
sanctifying or
deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:48
Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.49
2000 Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love.
Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.
2001 The
preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it:"50
"Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing."51
2002 God's free initiative demands
man's free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of "eternal life" respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:
"If at the end of your very good works . . ., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed "very good" since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the sabbath of eternal life."52
2003 Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are
sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore
special graces, also called
charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning "favor," "gratuitous gift," "benefit."53 Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church.54
2004 Among the special graces ought to be mentioned the
graces of state that accompany the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and of the ministries within the Church:
"Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness."55
2005 Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace
escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved.56 However, according to the Lord's words "Thus you will know them by their fruits"57 - reflection on God's blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.
A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: "Asked if she knew that she was in God's grace, she replied: 'If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.'"58
