If we can ONLY be happy with God, then how is Grace a "Gift"?

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For God to design rational creatures like us (or angels) MEANS designing creatures who can only be fulfilled by attaining the highest good, God.

But the highest Good, God, can only be attained via grace.

Therefore, it seems that for God to create any rational creature, he must, out of justice, invite relationship with him out of grace. Or else God would be a bad God, letting his creatures suffer – even for all eternity – by having them created for a nature and yet never be given the means to fulfill that nature.

Dilemma? How is Grace/Heaven a gift, if our very nature requires it?
 
Not sure if that quite gets to what I’m asking. I’m not framing this as a Protestant or Justification issue, e.g., faith vs works or free will.

Instead, I’m looking at the bigger picture of creation and what it means for God to create humans.
 
OK but that’s a different question. I’m talking about the fact that humans need grace to be happy.

In other words, we were made such that we could only be happy by grace.
 
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Yes, and I think Cruciferi’s point is that that grace is, in fact, offered to all of us.
 
OK then what is grace?

Something extra not owed to nature, right?

And yet our nature is meant to have grace?
 
I think our nature is meant to be open to grace; resisting it then is self-destructive.

Also, why isn’t our nature and existence itself a gift?
 
We can only be happy with God means, we can only be happy when we “jump into God”, giving ourselves “into him”, into Union.

God gives us Grace, such that we are now able to give ourselves into Union to him, where before we could not, and therefore could not be happy until he gave us the grace to jump into him.
“Our hearts are restless until we rest IN thee.”

God does not join himself to us but gives us Grace so that we join ourselves to him, so that we are able to do this. Then we are happy, because we have given ourselves to the one we love, and God is happy because he has given himself to us, the ones he loves.

John Martin
 
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I think my issue is: Why are we born into a condition whereby we are made for communion with God in order to be happy — and yet this thing that will allow us happiness, communion with God, must be added later? And people can reject it, to their peril.
 
Don’t ask us; negotiate with the LORD, with ‘I AM’, the same way that Abraham did concerning Sodom and Gomorrah; with the Church the LORD is making sure that Sodom and Gomorrah do not happen again.

John Martin
 
So in other words, why do we have free will? There is such a thing as natural happiness; grace is not necessary for happiness per se, but it is necessary for ultimate happiness. The “gap” there between nature and grace is for free will to make a choice, as I understand it. If we did not require an exercise of will to realize our ultimate fulfilment, then we would not be spiritual creatures, but only another kind of animal.
 
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Pardon my ignorance but what exactly is grace? How does grace contribute to happiness?
 
Are you overthinking?

Degrees of happiness and grace sufficient for the differing needs of each individual and each situation.

Keep it simple. God is God of simplicity, being utter Simplicity Himself. The evil one introduces complication and incites doubt. We see that in these threads daily.
 
Grace is God’s presence and action in a soul; as Aquinas described it, a “partaking in the Divine Nature.” This contributes to happiness by stimulating the will to virtue, which are habits that enhance well-being, and helping us to avoid sin, which are self-destructive acts. Grace enables eternal happiness by creating a capacity for the beatific vision, which is a direct communion with God enjoyed by souls in heaven. St. Athanasius summed up Christianity, which is also a good summary of the act and purpose of grace: God became Man, so that Man may become God.
 
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But if you don’t go to Heaven, isn’t the only alternative hell?
 
Thanks for the answer. A further question…does someone know when they have received grace? Is it a feeling or determined by their actions? Could I have received grace and not known it?
Thanks!
 
Are you asking if there is a place for eternal natural happiness? That’s a theological possibility (limbo), but since nobody except infants and those with severe intellectual disabilities can actually go through life without either grace or personal sin, our destiny is contingent on our choice between those two things.
 
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So then why should God create us such that we desire hell unless his grace intervenes?

Seems like an odd way to set things up.
 
The sacraments are the ordinary signs of grace for us, so baptism, the eucharist etc. For example, the words of absolution in the sacrament of confession are meant for us to have certainty that we have received the grace of the sacrament. There are also extraordinary means of grace, and those may or may not be known depending on an infinite number of ways God might communicate with an individual (private revelation being a famous example).
 
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