Does God withdraw his grace from the Apostate?

[HabemusFrancis]

If a Catholic suddenly abandons his faith and decides to forget God and “eat,drink and be merry” until he dies, does God abandon him in some way, or withdraw his grace/protection to a degree?

Almost like if your saying to God “I don’t want you” God says “OK” to that?

 

[fhansen]

If a Catholic suddenly abandons his faith and decides to forget God and “eat,drink and be merry” until he dies, does God abandon him in some way, or withdraw his grace/protection to a degree?

Almost like if your saying to God “I don’t want you” God says “OK” to that?

Well. yes, that’s more or less what Adam did to begin with. To the extent that we’re in communion with God, His grace flows. Or it’s sustained in us in a habitual manner. He’ll continue to appeal to and draw us by grace, but won’t force us to enter back into that communion that realizes sanctifying grace in us.

 

[1neophyte]

If a Catholic suddenly abandons his faith and decides to forget God and “eat,drink and be merry” until he dies, does God abandon him in some way, or withdraw his grace/protection to a degree?

Almost like if your saying to God “I don’t want you” God says “OK” to that?

No, He withdraws nothing. He says “OK” in the sense that He allows us to wander, but where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. The Cross was the greatest gesture of grace, and Jesus died on that Cross for us while we were still sinners. If that isn’t clear enough, check out the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son.

 

[MaryT777]

No, He withdraws nothing. He says “OK” in the sense that He allows us to wander, but where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. The Cross was the greatest gesture of grace, and Jesus died on that Cross for us while we were still sinners. If that isn’t clear enough, check out the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son.

Love the Romans verse.

Mary.

 

[RomanoAmerio]

If a Catholic suddenly abandons his faith and decides to forget God and “eat,drink and be merry” until he dies, does God abandon him in some way, or withdraw his grace/protection to a degree?

Almost like if your saying to God “I don’t want you” God says “OK” to that?

All mortal sin results in a loss of sanctifying grace.

However, this is not the same as God “abandoning” that person: the channel of repentance and sacramental absolution remains open until that person’s dying day.

(I’m tempted to quote from Saint Alphonsus’ Lenten sermon “On The Number of Sins Beyond Which God Pardons No More”, but I’m not sure how that will fly. )

 

[Bob_Crowley]

I think God does withdraw grace in some fashion from the apostate.

My father was brought up Catholic and his mother and two sisters remained practising Catholics all their life. His younger brother went through the motions, but may have been helped by his very Catholic wife’s devotion (they weren’t married long though - he died of an unexpected brain hemorrhage after they’d only been married a year or two).

But my father lost his faith. Over the years his behaviour just got worse and worse - bad tamper, drunkenness, deliberate cruelty, virtually destroying the family God had given him, and in the end he appeared in my room the night he died, apologised for the way he’d acted, and then disappeared with one almighty scream.

I also think that, like Pharaoh, there comes a point where** God** will harden a person so they’re irrevocably lost. For the first few plagues we read “Pharaoh hardened his heart.” But then we start to read “God hardened his heart”. God had had enough of Pharaoh - so He determined to destroy him and use him as an example to future generations of Israelis and Christians.

We can push God so far. But I think we can also get to the stage where He gives up on us. And yet it will be by our own choice. Pharaoh hardened his heart first, several times.

 

[John_Martin]

If a Catholic suddenly abandons his faith and decides to forget God and “eat,drink and be merry” until he dies, does God abandon him in some way, or withdraw his grace/protection to a degree?

Almost like if your saying to God “I don’t want you” God says “OK” to that?

God is not changed by our changes, nor persuaded by us. The LORD (‘I AM’) knows all in a single knowing (he is eternally knowing his wrath against sin, and eternally knowing his love and mercy).

Our trouble (and our hope) is that when we participate God, we can only join him in a single part of his knowing.
When united with the LORD (with ‘I AM’) we unite in an understanding of each other, much like two people who by just looking at each other in a given situation both understand the same thing at the same moment, “it is time to leave this place now and go to McDonalds”, because they are in each other’s knowing and understand each other.
When we “know God in his knowing of all”, what single place in his knowing of all are we knowing “with Him”?

Are we knowing him when he is saying, “I am with you always”, “I will not remember your sin in that day”, - he is eternally knowing himself saying these.
Or are we knowing him when he is saying, “I am visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation”, because he is eternally knowing himself saying this.

He is, with his Son, calling us to join to Him in a place of knowing him where he is knowing himself as merciful. He is also knowing his wrath, but since we cannot know both wrath and mercy in the same breath, he calls us to find mercy by knowing him in those “self-knowings” of his where he is knowing himself showing mercy to his People.

In apostasy, one is knowing God as powerless and nothing - and in his knowing is exercises judgement on those in that knowing.
Jesus calls us to be in a single place in God (for there are many and terrible places in God where we do not want God to know us being there along with the terrible things).
Remember when we were in the wilderness or at the mountain of the Law, and wanted Egypt and Egypt’s god (the gold calf) - The LORD’s wrath burning to destroy us. But Moses repeatedly turned to a knowing of God as he was knowing himself with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob - God repenting of his wrath actually meant that the people were now in God’s knowing of his Promises to the fathers, and the people were no longer present in his knowing of wrath at blasphemy.

It is the mercy of God that he calls us to unite to him in single self-knowings of mercy, even though he has many knowings of himself in himself always. In confession we seek to hear him say, “I see and know you in my knowing of mercy.” And we hear him say this in the absolution. And we begin to walk with him again in this place of mercy in his knowing as we fulfil the penance to cement our new friendship and new common knowing of love with Jesus (with ‘I AM SAVES’).

He is intimately knowing everything and each individual thing eternally in one knowing.
Our job is to join him in a specific knowing, so that we experience his intimate concern - we only know one thing at a time, and can join God in a single point of his knowing, even though he is always knowing all.

You join God in a specific knowing by calling to his mind and yours a specific point of his knowing, such as Abraham’s servant called God to remember his knowing of Abraham, in which knowing there was favor and blessing: (from Genesis 24): "12 And he said, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. "
When God hears this prayer, both you and he are now focused on Abraham, and God loves Abraham in his knowing, and as the servant asks, God is going to now show steadfast love to Abraham in this specific knowing that he and the servant are participating in, and grant success to the servant, whose master is Abraham, and God loves Abraham in his knowing.

If the servant joined God in knowing some other knowing of God, “God who punished the people of Babel, hear me…” he would have joined God in a knowing of wrath, and that knowing is not a pleasant place.

 

[Vico]

If a Catholic suddenly abandons his faith and decides to forget God and “eat,drink and be merry” until he dies, does God abandon him in some way, or withdraw his grace/protection to a degree?

Almost like if your saying to God “I don’t want you” God says “OK” to that?

God gives actual graces to effect conversion. Council of Trent, Session 6, Canon 3.
If anyone says that without the predisposing inspiration of the Holy Ghost[111] and without His help, man can believe, hope, love or be repentant as he ought,[112] so that the grace of justification may be bestowed upon him, let him be anathema.

ewtn.com/library/councils/trent6.htm

Lateran Council 1215 A.D., “And if, after the reception of baptism, anyone shall have lapsed into sin, through true penance he can always be restored.”

patristica.net/denzinger/, see 430.

 

[ffg]

If a Catholic suddenly abandons his faith and decides to forget God and “eat,drink and be merry” until he dies, does God abandon him in some way, or withdraw his grace/protection to a degree?

Perhaps a read of chapter 2 of Wisdom would help:

usccb.org/bible/wisdom/2

God always desires what He creates, it is us who in the freedom that is the Love of God, rejects Him.

Another angle...

God wouldn't be perfect if he withdrew (or corrected) His own work. 

That's just not logical to any logical definition of 'God'. 

(which typically starts with a being that never makes mistakes)

 

[o_mlly]

If a Catholic suddenly abandons his faith and decides to forget God and “eat,drink and be merry” until he dies, does God abandon him in some way, or withdraw his grace/protection to a degree?

Almost like if your saying to God “I don’t want you” God says “OK” to that?

Isa 55:8-9.