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Grace and Free Will

Homily
Sunday, February 18, 2007, 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Joseph Parish, Detroit

            Today’s homily will bring us to a meditation on one of the most important topics in our spiritual lives: the question of grace and free will. I propose this after a meditation on today’s Gospel (Lk 6:27-38). Often the liturgical readings are so disposed that the first reading and the Gospel share some general topic, and the second reading, from the New Testament, addresses a different one. The question of grace and free will could require many volumes of explanation and thought, yet today I will hit on the basics we need to live a holy and joyful life.

            Today Jesus gives us a lot of very practical advice on how to live the virtue of supernatural charity: love, bless, pray, give, forgive, stop condemning, etc. And in doing so, he shows us really what is in his own heart. He reveals himself to us, for he himself practices what he preaches, for he is God. When he lives in us by grace, he wants us to live the same way.

            And so the question is, does God live out this love in my own heart, or do I have to exercise this by myself? Will grace bring me to such good deeds, or will I have to earn the grace by doing these good deeds on my own? What is the role of God’s grace, and what is the role of my free will?

            If one were to answer that it is all my own free will, or to say that it’s all God’s grace, both positions would be in error. To say that progress in the spiritual life depends on just me alone is the error of Pelagius. He was a British monk who came to and lived in Rome just at the turn of the fifth century, the early 400’s, and denied the necessity of grace, among other things. St. Jerome called his teaching the “heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno,”[1] who claimed that passions could be absolutely rooted out by the ascesis of virtue. He claimed, that the powers of man were enough to overcome sin, that “we have the capacity of not sinning.”[2] From this erroneous position he drew three more conclusions: that man can remain sinless if he simply chooses so; that there is no such thing as original sin which entangles us in other men’s sins; and that man has no need of supernatural assistance in his efforts to attain righteousness. Saints Augustine and Jerome, but more Augustine, refuted him at great length in their writings.[3]

            The other position is to put all into God’s hands, abdicating or rejecting the role human freedom. This might be the prevalent position of the men of our day. No matter what we do, God will always keep his covenant, so we are free from any law. An ancient form of this was called “antinomianism,” a word whose Greek roots mean anti- or “against” and “law.” Priests and writers such as Molinos, Petrucci, Fenelon and Madame Guyon proposed something called “Quietism,” which is a sort of interior annihilation of one’s own soul so that God would absorb it; and in the process of their supposed absorption into God, they excused themselves for many of their most scandalous sins. The protestant reformers promoted a form of this under the flag of “sola fide,” Latin for “by faith alone,” asserting that it was enough for man to believe, and he would be saved regardless of his sins.  Then the Calvinists proposed the idea of predestination, where man’s freedom really has nothing to do with his eternal salvation.

            Both extremes are heresy; for both freedom and grace have important roles to play in our salvation and spiritual lives.

            Today the question of freedom and grace touches us all the time. When we approach the confessional and examine our consciences, we may inquire as to the personal responsibility we had for an act. We wonder about Jesus Christ’s mandate of baptism and Eucharistic communion for eternal life, and the many who are baptized. I continually find young people in great dilemmas regarding the election of their state in life. When I speak to such souls, I find they are Calvinists, for they think that God has predestined them to go down one concrete path in this life, and if they veer from it but a little, they will fall into damnation or other such evils both in this life and the next.

            Isn’t it astounding, that we Americans who pride ourselves on freedom, have such mixed up, unclear and contradictory notions about freedom. Yet there you have it.

            The Catechism of the Catholic Church[4] teaches us that “The grace of Christ is not in the slightest way a rival of our freedom, when this freedom accords with the sense of the true and the good that God has put in the human heart.” And so “the more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom.” Allow me to offer a simple formula which can help us all: Grace prompts, freedom responds. Freedom “is the power, rooted in reason and will, to at or not to act, to do this or that and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility…. It attains it perfection when it is directed towards God, our beatitude,”[5] and it is abused when it is directed towards evil. This is why we can say love is less defined by the power of choice than by the power to love what is good.

            So against Pelagius, I cannot live free from sin unless I enjoy the promptings of grace. Furthermore, against the antinomians and predestinationists, I cannot attain salvation unless I respond with total freedom to God’s grace. It’s not either-or, it’s both-and. And when young people choose their state in life, instead of listening to some voice that has a predestined path you must follow lest you be damned, I tell you this: be free! See what God has prompted, and respond. And if you respond with true love for God and neighbor, have no scruple about whether your election of state in life was the correct one: I guarantee you, it was.

            In today’s Gospel, Jesus invites us to live according to a concrete code of love. Jesus’ invitation in the Gospel, which is the living word of God, is the prompting; our practice of the virtues is how we respond with love. And so turn into your interior, and pray to Jesus, promise to love as he asks you to love, and ask him for the aid of grace in doing so. In this way, an exemplary exterior life will flow forth from an abundant interior life. Amen.