But grace isn’t magic: it won’t work in spite of you not wanting or allowing it to. You have to let it work.
God’s grace is
MORE than magic,
ALWAYS ACCOMPLISH for what God provided for!
If God’s purpose were made dependent on the foreseen free act of any creature, God would thereby sacrifice
His own freedom, and would submit Himself to His creatures, thus abdicating His essential supremacy–a thing which is, of course,
utterly inconceivable. – St. Thomas C. G., II, xxviii.
.
Even our
wanting/ will to cooperate with God’s graces are
CAUSED BY GOD’S SUPERNATURAL GRACES and GOD’S SUPERNATURAL INTERVENTION in our souls!!!
.
Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott,
For every salutary act
internal supernatural grace of God (gratia elevans) is
absolutely necessary, (
De fide).
There is a
supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul, which
precedes the free act of the will, (
De fide).
.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Free Will
explains;
“God is the
author of all causes and effects, but is not the author of sin, because an action
ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen. Still God is the
cause of sin.”
.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence
explains;
“His wisdom He so
orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.
He directs all, even
evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.”
Evil, therefore, ministers to God’s design (St. Gregory the Great, op. cit., VI,
.
308 The truth that God is at work in
all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator.
God is the
first cause who operates in and through
secondary causes:
"For God is at work in you,
both to
will and to
work for his good pleasure."171
Far from diminishing the creature’s dignity, this truth
enhances it.
St. Thomas teaches that God
effects everything, the
willing and the
achievement. S. Th.II/II 4, 4 ad 3:
St. Thomas also teaches that all movements of will and choice must be traced to the divine will: and
not to any other cause, because
Gad alone is the cause of our willing and choosing. CG, 3.91.
.
The Mystery of Predestination by John Salza
explains;
Page 77; “With
efficacious grace, man is
able to resist the grace but
does not, because the grace causes him to
freely choose the good.
This means that when
God wills a person to perform a salutary act (e.g., prayer, good works), He grants him the means (an
efficacious grace ) that
infallibly produces the end (
the act willed by God ).”
.
Aquinas said,
“God changes the will without forcing it.
But he can change the will from the fact that
He himself operates in the will as He does in nature,” De Veritatis 22:9.
2022; “The divine
initiative in the work of grace
precedes, prepares, and
elicits the free response of man. …”
.
God bless
