If you were once persuaded that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law (Rom 3:28) and now you believe that you must not only have faith but but also *merit *grace in order to attain eternal life (CCC 2010), how much works must you do to attain justification?
Our initial forgiveness and justification are not something we can earn as by our own works. Our sinful nature prevents us. But God in His mercy has canceled the debt of our sins because of the advocacy of His Son and the intercession of the Spirit. All he asks is that we repent of our sins and believe in the words of His Son. Then, God in His infinite love grants us the grace of justification. He thus puts us into the “state of grace” as it is called in Catholic circles. Maintaining that state through good works, which stem from our faith in Christ, is essential to salvation because nothing unclean will ever enter into Heaven.
This is why the CCC (2008) tells us how “[t]he merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man’s merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.”
In answer to your question, then, the amount and degree of good works a person must do in order to enter Heaven depends on his disposition and on God’s eternal decrees. A man can only do good works if he is acting according to the grace which God has given him; so if God gives one man little grace and another man great grace, then the first may not have the ability to do the works that the other man does. God alone knows how his end will be.
Since you apparently now believe in purgatory, I must ask … say I were a fellow Catholic and my dear wife or other family member dies. How many masses must I pay for to be said in their name, or how many indulgences purchased before he/she receives enough grace from the treasury of merit before she makes it out?
Again this is a very subjective matter, depending much on the condition of the dead. The Holy Spirit always intercedes for those in Purgatory (Romans 8:26-27, Rev. 14:13); in that last passage you can see how important good works are in this process. Compare this with 1st Corinthians 3:11-15, where St. Paul describes the process as a flame which tests both the good works and the bad. The good works survive and because of that we receive our rewards. But the evil works (which are sins) are purged and we suffer as a result.
So in answer to your question, the amount of prayers by you, your family, and the Holy Spirit which are needed depends on the amount and degree of works done by the penitent departed one. His own good works should help him through the process, and of course the Holy Spirit’s intercessions are the most powerful because in Him subsists the divine nature.
By St. Paul’s example we discerns that it is good to pray for those who are being judged (2nd Timothy 1:16-18), and of course this would include the process of purgation which the Church associates with our judgement. So you ought to continue to pray always and everywhere, because only God knows what will be necessary for your loved one’s expiation.
Please don’t take my question wrong and I mean no disrespect but as you reflect on an answer, how do you view it in light of Galatians 5:1-5 (namely verse 4)?
In that passage, St. Paul reminds the Galatians that Christians are no longer bound to the law of Moses, and rebukes those who try to justify themselves apart from Christ. It is because we are no longer bound to the law that Christians can have the confidant assurance that our good works, being rooted in the foundation of Christ, are meritorious, as St. Paul made clear in the third chapter of 1st Corinthians. He exhorts us to build on the foundation of Christ with good works so that we will receive the reward of Heaven when we are judged good and faithful – thus we merit our final sanctification by acting in accordance with God’s grace, as explained in the CCC (2010).
To my Catholic friends reading this I ask … If you were to die tonight and God’s standard is His holy law, namely the 10 commandments, who here can stand before Him and claim to have followed it throughout their entire life (not to mention faithfully keeping all the sacraments, laws of the church, etc.)? Would you be innocent or guilty?
No one living today can claim to have kept the commandments without fail. Apart from God, we would all be guilty before His eyes. But we may rejoice in the fact that He, in His loving mercy, has opened a way for us: through the Sacraments of the Church and the charity which these Sacraments stir into us, we can maintain our graceful state before God through frequent confession and participation in the Lord’s Supper. Though we fall in our journey, and break the commandments, we have God’s help to get up again and repent. This is the great grace He has given us in the Catholic Church.
Look in the parish bulletin, there may be a section on “inquiry sessions” or one that says “interested in being catholic?”. Those sections should give you dates and times to come meet (usually with others) the priest and/or RCIA team. That’s what I did, and since I knew I told them on day one I was ready. So I started RCIA 