Grace generation and distribution

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Good morning all,

I had a few questions about grace.
  1. Does God the Father or Jesus generate grace?
  2. If we are in a state of sanctifying grace because of the sacraments, and we cooperate with that grace, pray, volunteer, etc, and that generates additional actual grace. Whom does that grace come from?
  3. Also, if we do a consecration to the Virgin Mary and we surrender the graces from those actions to Mary so she distributes them as she sees fit, again whom do those graces come from? Who gives them to her?
Thank you!
 
Grace is an extremely complex theological topic and there are entire books written about it. However, I’ll try to answer your questions simply:
  1. Grace is basically a “free and undeserved help” or gift that God gives us to help us respond to his call. Grace comes from God, as in all three persons of God. It’s not like one person of the Trinity is in charge of “generating” the day’s supply of grace.
  2. Same answer as question 1
  3. Same answer as question 1. All grace comes from God; we certainly don’t “generate” it ourselves. To the extent that some type of grace was transferable to help another soul, then God could give that grace to Mary to distribute the same way God could give us the grace in the first place.
You’re kind of attempting to take a supernatural gift and reduce it to a material object, like if it were a supply of gold coins that God had to mint every day and then hand them out one to each person and then the person receiving a coin somehow multiplied it into two gold coins and hand one back to Mary to distribute to someone else…that’s not how it works, this is all supernatural.
 
According to Aquinas (Summa , I-II, Q. 112, a. 1) Jesus’ humanity could not cause grace. However, his humanity is the instrument through which all grace is given to man. Since we are united to Him in Baptism, we too are capable of being channels of grace.

From The Science & Theology of Salt in Scripture:
  1. Jesus tells St. Faustina that “I am Love and Mercy itself. When a soul approaches Me with trust, I fill it with such an abundance of graces that it cannot contain them within itself, but radiates them to other souls [Kowalska, Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska , n. 1074];”
  2. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart [“believers heart” in this passage would correspond to Jesus saying “approaches with trust” in his conversation with Faustina in #1 above ] shall flow rivers of living water’” (Jn. 7:37-38). This living water is the grace of the Holy Spirit and it is a river flowing out from the believer’s heart; and,
  3. St. Paul wrote, “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor. 4:6-7). Fulton Sheen so completely viewed himself as an earthen vessel that he titled his autobiography, “Treasure in Clay.” In Sheen’s book, The Mystical Body of Christ , he wrote, “The graces of God are communicated through ‘frail vessels [SML]. [J. Sheen, The Mystical Body of Christ ]’” Did Sheen really equate the frailty of the earthen vessel with the human body? He wrote, “The Mystical Christ of Pentecost, like the physical Christ of Bethlehem, was small, and delicate, and frail like any new-born thing. Its members were small; its organs were in the process of formation [Ibid.].” This is why the Church is considered to be the “Prolongation of the Incarnation through space and time [Ibid.].”
  4. According to JPII, just as a sacrament is an outward sign of an inward (and unseen) reality of grace, the body, itself, enters into the “definition of a sacrament” (loosely speaking). This is so because it is a visible sign of an invisible reality. Not only is the body a sign of grace received, but it also visibly expresses that which it has received, and does so efficaciously for self and others. Furthermore, the body not only expresses grace but, as we shall see later, “produces” it. The body contributes to grace becoming “part of man [JP II, “Marital Love Reflects God’s Love for His People,” General audience of July 28, 1982].
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What is the meaning of mouth? ”“Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and so passes on? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man” (Mt. 15:17-18). The word “mouth” refers to the entire body of man. It is the body which sends out what is in the inner heart of man. As St. JP II wrote, the body alone is able to express the spiritual … and it does so in the language of the body.
 
Jesus’ “humanity” is not being discussed here. Jesus as the second person of the Holy Trinity is God.
God gives grace to us, as a gift.

I am not really sure how your quote, while interesting, answers any of the OP’s questions. Like I said, grace is a theologically complex topic, whole books have been written on it, but the OP is asking very specific questions here.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Jesus’ “humanity” is not being discussed here. Jesus as the second person of the Holy Trinity is God.
God gives grace to us, as a gift.
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Yes, Jesus’ humanity very much plays a part in the economy of ALL grace. Jesus’ humanity and Divinity are inseparable. A “gift”, as you describe it, is another way of saying “sent/communicated”. ALL grace is sent through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. There is no act/expression of God that all three Person’s of the Trinity do not partake of in unison. All three questions of the OP deal with grace received and, therefore, sent by God to man. There are only two Persons of the Trinity that Scripture ever describes as being sent. The Son is sent, in the Holy Spirit, thus both are sent. The only Person never described as being sent is the Father. The Father is the mouth of God … He who sends out.

The OP wrote “Whom does that grace come from?” A grace that is coming, is a grace that has been, or will be, sent. The answer to his questions are: from the eternal act of a Trinitarian God, sent into creation through the Word (Jesus, the Word of God, first-born of all creation) and in the Holy Spirit.
 
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Sanctifying grace is ultimately the divine life of the Trinity within the soul. That is, God’s divine presence.
We could get into a discussion of created vs uncreated grace but that may make this another tricky ecumenical thread…
 
Thank you for your response! I get that it is supernatural, it’s just a new concept to me. I’ve been Catholic all my life but had bad Cathechisis at school, so know I am grappling with all these concepts as I do a Marian consecration. But appreciate responses!
 
stephenSTOSS1 said:
much plays a part in the economy of ALL grace. Jesus’ humanity and Divinity are inseparable. A “gift”, as you describe it, is another way of saying “sent/communicated”. ALL grace is sent through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. There is no act/expression of God that all three Person’s of the Trinity do not partake of in unison. All three questions of the OP deal with grace received and, therefore, sent by God to man. There are only two Persons of the Trinity that Scripture ever describes as being sent. The Son is sent, i
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Thank you!!
 
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