Waiting until the Grace of God becomes realistic in my Journey to Holiness?

Waiting until the Grace of God becomes realistic in my journey to Holiness?

There may be some questions as to what grace has to do with holiness.  First grace is a matter of understanding the reception of this virtue and its impact on the individual man.

Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us, but grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church.  There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments.  There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning “favor,” "gratuitous gift,” “benefit.”  Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church.  They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church.  (CCC 2003).

We know that in everything God works for good with those that love him…For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren.  And those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified.  (CCC 2012).

Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ.  This union is called "mystical" because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments - “the holy mysteries” and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity.  God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all.  (CCC 2014).

It becomes that our path to holiness is not a mystery but needs the grace through the Holy Spirit that the gifts given to each one are for the particular mission we are called to participate in and for whom we are sent.  

So to answer the question regarding the grace needed to arrive at holiness we find that within the very humanity of Christ we too shall look at the mission each of us is sent to accomplish using our human attributes with the gifts the Holy Spirit endows us with to reach people who are in need spiritually to find and share his kingdom on earth.

It no longer remains a mystery that may appear hidden from human intellect; it becomes the very essence of God working through his Spirit and completing his plan to save, redeem, and glorify his very divinity through the man he created to bring more of his kind to the throne of God.

If it was just an automatic effort that we were following Christ, his doing the will of his Father, and blessing us with a learned expression of obedience, then we could say that our gifts were just his manner of completing a divine presence without human actions.  However, as Jesus took on human nature everything he did to redeem man was so that man could emulate what he did and become the very holiness of the Trinity.  Here we find the grace of God through the Holy Spirit’s divine intervention on us becoming the exactness of God himself.

Ralph B. Hathaway