Grace and justification

Choose an option and you are told at once whether it was right. The answer and the reason wait behind “Show the answer”.

A watercolor of one lamb pouring water from a basin onto a small sprout in the soil while another lamb watches, with a slanted beam of light falling beside them

Which of these comes closest to what “grace” means?
1. The repayment God owes to someone who has lived a good life, claimed as the wage their goodness earned
2. Something good a person already carries by nature, like an inborn temperament or a talent
3. The help God gives freely so that we can answer his call, and the gift that lets us share in his own life
4. A special experience, such as the warmth or the consolation felt while praying
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Answer ③ The help God gives freely so that we can answer his call, and the gift that lets us share in his own life
Grace is not a wage collected for work done but a gift freely given, and it is not an extra laid on top of the powers we were born with — it brings us to share in the life of God himself. The first choice turns grace into wages, the second into a natural ability, the fourth into a feeling.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1996-1997, 1999
What does “justification” mean?
1. Being washed clean of sin and receiving the righteousness of God, so that a person is made new from the inside out
2. God leaving the sin exactly where it is and declaring the person righteous on the outside only
3. Becoming a morally faultless person by one's own hard effort
4. An acquittal handed down at the judgment after death, something that has not yet happened in this life
Show the answer
Answer ① Being washed clean of sin and receiving the righteousness of God, so that a person is made new from the inside out
Justification was won for us by the Passion of Christ and is conferred in baptism, and it does not merely forgive sin: it really makes the inner self holy. The second choice shrinks justification to a declaration in name only, the third turns it into an achievement of human effort, and the fourth puts off until after death what has already begun.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1987, 1989-1992
Even the first stirring of a heart toward repentance is already the work of grace.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ① Yes
Yes. Even the preparation to receive grace is itself the work of grace: God moves the heart first, and we answer that movement. Turn it around — we do the preparing, and grace arrives afterwards — and the truth that God acts first has been rubbed out.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1989, 2001
Which of these states the difference between “sanctifying grace” and “actual grace” correctly?
1. Sanctifying grace is given to clergy and religious, actual grace to the laity
2. The two are only different names for one and the same thing
3. Sanctifying grace is the help given as each occasion arises, and actual grace is the lasting gift that abides in the soul
4. Sanctifying grace is the lasting gift that abides in the soul and lets us share in the life of God, and actual grace is the help God gives as each occasion arises along the road of conversion and sanctification
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Answer ④ Sanctifying grace is the lasting gift that abides in the soul and lets us share in the life of God, and actual grace is the help God gives as each occasion arises along the road of conversion and sanctification
Sanctifying grace is a gift that stays; actual grace is God stepping in for the occasion. The third choice has the two swapped round, and the first is the common mistake of sorting kinds of grace by a person's standing in the Church.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1999-2000
When grace is at work inside someone, their freedom is pushed aside and has no part to play.
1. Yes
2. No
Show the answer
Answer ② No
No. Justification is something God's grace and human freedom bring about together. Grace does not abolish freedom; it gives freedom the strength to answer — and even that answer was drawn out of us by grace first.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1993, 2002
Why can it be said that a person gains “merit” before God?
1. Because our good works place God under a debt he is bound to repay
2. Because God has freely allowed us to take part in the work of his grace
3. Because the Church has rejected the word merit, so in truth it cannot be said at all
4. Because good works stored up before baptism earn us the first grace of conversion
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Answer ② Because God has freely allowed us to take part in the work of his grace
Between God and ourselves there is nothing that could be claimed as a right to begin with; merit comes from God allowing us to cooperate with the grace he gave first. The first and fourth choices are the Pelagian mistake that turns grace into wages, while the third leans so far the other way that no room is left for cooperation at all.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2007-2008, 2010
Grace has truly been given only when a feeling or an experience confirms it.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ② No
No. Grace belongs to the supernatural order, so it escapes our experience and can be known only by faith. Feeling no consolation does not mean there is no grace; we can only tell by the fruit it bears in a life.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2005
Who is called to perfection, that is, to the fullness of charity?
1. Every Christian, whatever their state of life or their circumstances
2. Religious and clergy
3. Those who have been given a special charism
4. Those who have been given the grace of martyrdom
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Answer ① Every Christian, whatever their state of life or their circumstances
Holiness is not the portion of a few but a call given to everyone who is baptized. The road does pass by way of the cross, though, and once holiness is made a matter of rank or of some special experience, the call handed to us right where we stand goes unnoticed.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2012-2016