Grace Explained

Grace Explained by Brian Thomas Beckett Mullady

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2LSX6LXSUTW36?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is a readable and accessible book of Thomistic theology on the subject of grace. If you are purchasing this as a self-help book or a popular saccharine-filled book on nebulous spirituality - as suggested by the title - you will be disappointed. Father Mullady has a nice, plain, easy-going writing style and he has a gift for synthesizing important and difficult propositions of theology in a way that is vivid and understandable. I've been studying Thomism for more than twenty years, but I got a lot out of Father Mullady's insights.

Father Mullady sets the stage in a way that is important and surprising. In following Aquinas, who follows Aristotle in this regard, the final end of mankind is God because man is an intellectual being and it is ultimate desire of intellectual beings to learn and to know the truth. Mullady explains:

“When we talk about the desire to see God, most people think of it as a desire of the will, which means that it requires a conscious moral decision. Therefore, it can't be there just by nature because that would mean that God is obliged to give His supernatural life to human beings, which would compromise His perfect freedom. But in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, the desire for God is not a desire of the will, but rather is related to the power in man that wonders at the causes of the world, a wonder that can only be satisfied in seeing God. That power, of course, is the intellect, and that is where the desire to see God is located.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 12). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

I must confess that I am one who has made that mistake. I understand that the desire to see God is a desire of the will to rest in the Good, but there is also the desire to know which is fundamental to the intellect. In this regard, as Mullady points out, mankind is different from other created material beings who do not share the same intellect. As Mullady explains:

“Since this tendency is identical with all natures having an intellect, it must be true for the angels as well. Though each angel has its own unique nature, because of the presence of the intellect, their natural fulfillment must be the same as man's. The tendency to the supernatural is not caused by the ability to realize this purpose or to be created in grace; it is identical with possessing an intellect. Thomas gives six arguments for this that have nothing to do with man being created in grace, and nothing to do with the will whatsoever, but rather have to do with the inadequacy of the unaided mind to know the truth — not only for man, but also for angels.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 12). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

But human beings are material and our desire to know cannot fully reach up to God without assistance. That assistance is called “grace.”

“It is important to note that the desire causes the need for grace, and not the other way around. Man by nature is called to an end he cannot attain by nature because of the exalted character of the end. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way: “Ultimate felicity is to be sought in nothing other than the operation of the intellect, since no desire carries on to such sublime heights as the desire to understand the truth” (Summa contra Gentiles, III, 50). Other desires human beings have can be satisfied in other things, but not this one. Aquinas concludes then about the sublimity of human nature: “Let those men be ashamed, then, who seek man's felicity in the most inferior things when it is so highly situated” (Summa contra Gentiles III, 50).”

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (pp. 13-14). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Grace is the means that bridges the gap between man and God. Grace changes and fills the soul, allowing it to more easily choose God:

“Grace, then, is health of the soul. By grace, the human soul is qualitatively raised to enjoy God's own life. Grace, therefore, while it doesn't transform the person into a different substance, is still a true interior change. It is not just God overlooking the sickness of the soul, with the soul remaining in exactly the same condition as it was before the reception of grace.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (pp. 45-46). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

“The Catholic Church has always taught that grace involves a true interior change which is both the forgiveness of sins and something more: the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Justification, then, is both the forgiveness of sins and the indwelling of the Spirit. This is transformative and restorative, not just a papering-over of evil. Grace is a result of God's love, and He does not just leave us as we are. In human love, we respond to a lovable quality we already find in a person. This is not true of God's love, which does not respond to already-existing qualities in things but rather brings those qualities into being. After all, God's love brings forth our being to begin with; everything that exists does so because God loves it into existence.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 46). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

God's actions in providing grace are categorized differently according to effect. Actual grace is help given to a person in an actual circumstance to reject sin and accept/love God. Sanctifying grace establishes a habit of virtue in the soul of the recipient. Charismatic graces are given to people - even sinners - to build up the church. Cooperating grace entices but does not force our free will. Operating grace effects justification.

Father Mullady helped clear up my understanding of justification. While Protestantism tends to separate the moment of justification from sanctification by using two different words, i.e., justification and sanctification, Catholicism tends to use one word, i.e., “justification,” to describe the entire process from conversion to ultimate salvation. Catholicism recognizes, however, that “justification” breaks down into an initial moment of conversion, at which point, actual grace and cooperating grace work to entice the individual to turn away from sin and toward God, and the rest of justification, during which the cultivation of sanctifying grace occurs. The effect of the Catholic scheme is to make the role of grace more central. Mullady explains:

“In these final two chapters, we will consider the results, or effects, of two kinds of grace: operating grace (justification) and cooperating grace (merit). Let's begin by returning to a definition of operating grace: the initial movement of God within us that moves our free will. That free will, as we have said, has to be capable of being moved (that is, we cannot have blocked it from being moved), but we only participate in this movement in the sense that we receive it. This is the initial movement of grace, and it is what makes our souls to be right in God's eyes. Since our souls are spiritual, it is necessary that in order for them to be right, we must in some sense share life with God. It is a fundamental point of this book that both angels and human beings have as their final purpose seeing God in the face, knowing Him directly, by the light of glory, and that humans have to be prepared for this purpose while on earth by our free choices. But we have to experience the true life of God within us if our free choices are to conform to the way He knows and loves. It is in this first result of grace that man, in his soul, becomes righteous and just: the usual term for this is “justification,” by which we truly become a child of God.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 54). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Mullady deals with the Protestant bete noir of “merit” by noting that the Bible acknowledges the concept of merit and explains:

“In Catholic theology, all merit is divided into two types: congruent and condign. This respects the manner in which one becomes worthy of repayment for a service rendered. Condign merit is quid pro quo among equals. It is based on strict equivalence: I buy a loaf of bread and I owe the seller a just price. This cannot take place with God. He is infinite; we are not. There can be no demand for justice for our works from God.

Congruent merit is not strict equivalence between equals but an example of proportionate equality. God accepts that the person has done what he is able to do given the limitations of his nature and rewards him not because his actions are strictly worthy of God, but because he has chosen to cooperate with grace. It is not that our acts of free will cause God to reward us, but that He chooses to condescend to reward us for doing the best we can. He is saying, in effect, “I never condemn those who do what I ask of them; since I never act against human nature, I reward based on human nature.” God promised to reward us and His promise is infallible.

But there is also a part of our action that is worthy of merit in strict equivalence, and that is the part that is the direct result of the movement of the Holy Spirit. Remember that both we and God act in our good works. The merit received as a result of our allowing the Holy Spirit to act in us is called condign merit. This is the reward given strictly according to the order of justice as the deed merits — not from our cooperation with grace but to the extent that we have become, in a sense, transparent to the movement of the Spirit. In other words, God rewards two in any meritorious act: Himself and the individual who acts.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 59). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

This is a book well worth the investment.