Grace, as its name implies, is the free gift of God. It can be merited only because God has made it meritable. The very possi bility of its acceptance is itself a grace which no merit can acquire. It is the gift of God which is only given to us to draw us on to God Himself. Its reason lies in the Beatific Vision, for its only purpose is to lead us to that. God, in effect, created man for the joy of Heaven. Of Hell it is distinctly affirmed by Christ our Lord that it was made for the devil and his angels, whereas of Heaven He declares that it is the kingdom prepared for men. This, of course, should not be taken as implying that Heaven exists for man only, or primarily, since its essential act is merely the contemplation of the Eternal Beauty, the ravishing Vision of Power, Wisdom, Love in perfect harmony, the adequate knowledge of the Ever-Blessed Three-in-One. But all that we really mean is that God created man for the ultimate enjoyment of Himself. Each individual whom God calls into the world has his destined place in the economy of the Divine Plan. That place is the direct result of God's own decree, so that the good are predestined to the happiness of eternal life. This decree of God is the first act, if one can suppose a first act in that which knows no sequence; then by a subsequent act of God's Providence men's lives are arranged for their final reward or failure.
Grace, therefore, is ordained to nothing else than the ultimate purpose of man's creation. It is the free help of God whereby we each of us achieve His final predestination. Man was intended from the first to be raised to a supernatural order, i.e. God created Adam so that he should know his Maker, not in the mere material sense in which our natural human wit can discern His traces in the physical and intellectual universe, but with that ineffable intuition resulting in a participation by us in the Divine Nature. For Scripture insists, with a monotony that is almost wearisome, that the effect of grace is to make us the very mates of God: "All who do justice are born of God"; "All who are born of God do not sin, for the generation of God preserveth them"; "The Father gave it to us that we should be called and should be the children of God." It is in this sense that the Fathers understand these texts of Scripture and the famous words of Saint Peter, wherein he expressly describes the effect of the promises of God as making us "partakers of the Divine Nature." Saint Cyril of Alexandria specially declares that by grace there shines in our soul "the mark of the substance of God." This grace, therefore, is ordained to glory. He created us for Himself, and has held out to us His helping hand to reach to the heights of that contemplation. Grace, in other words, is the means whereby we are made conscious of that other world and enabled eventually to attain it, not by our natural powers, but by God's free gift.
I have therefore to realize that this grace lies entirely in His Hands. The knowledge of the wonderful heights to which I can climb must necessarily enlarge considerably the sense of my own dignity. The fact that I am made a partaker of the Divine Nature should influence me to respond to the place to which I am called. It should add to my view of the world, of others souls, of the infinite reverence due even to the most sordid and most miserable child of the human race. We are all by this grace partakers one with another in the very substance of God. But while in this way giving me a nobler appreciation of my vocation as a human being, and extending my importance in my own spiritual estimation, I must remember that it is all His doing and none of my own. He has, indeed, permitted me to merit certain graces, which for all my merit yet remain His gifts: but certain others can never be the wage of goodness, only an added gratuity due to His generous condescension to my poverty. But the chief view I must take of it all is the consciousness that I am made for Him: consequently every time I realize He has been helping me, I must redouble my efforts to reach Him. Each grace is not to be rested in, but made a stepping-stone to the next grace. The grace of faith, for example, is but the beginning of life, not its end. It is but an illumination whereby I am made conscious that He calls me higher; and the daily blessings of health, friends, work, the beauty of nature, and arts and crafts, have to be viewed as daily-given helps to reach His side.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.