2136 "Man can do nothing without divine grace...." (danger)

November 1, 1941: Book 31

A person becomes aware of his lack of strength as soon as he is a believer, for then he recognizes himself as a weak creature without God's grace. Consequently, a believer does not need to be particularly reproached for his own weakness, for he will rarely consider himself capable of reaching God through his own strength. The believer sees in God the most sublime and perfect being and is aware of his lowliness and weakness. He will therefore always ask God for the strength for his earthly life, for his ascent to the heights. He will ask God for grace because he knows that he cannot ascend without divine grace. However, if a person lacks faith, he does not see himself as a powerless creature. Rather, he is firmly convinced that it is up to him alone to achieve what he sets out to do, be it earthly or spiritual success. For the most part, he only strives for earthly success and spiritual endeavour is unimportant to him. For him, however, it is a real danger if spiritual success is only justified by a gift of grace. For since he regards himself as powerful, he has no concerns that he would be incapable of moulding himself according to God's will and therefore makes his spiritual maturing dependent on whether God has chosen him, i.e. whether He has bestowed His grace on him.... i.e. has destined him for bliss. And thus he switches off his free will, which allows him to ask for grace. He has no deep faith and therefore cannot and will not believe this teaching when he is reproached for his powerlessness.... on the other hand, he waits for divine grace to take hold of him without his intervention, if this is the divine will. True faith allows the person to pray in the right way, full of humility and submission to God's will, yet it is always his own will which prompts him to pray, whereas the unbelieving person does not become active himself but waits for what he should ask for, i.e. request from God. And this attitude can be the result of the fact that a person is taught that he is unable to do anything without the divine gift of grace and therefore does nothing to become worthy of this grace.... The teaching that man can do nothing of his own strength does not determine him to ask for the supply of strength, but it determines him to wait inactively, and it is therefore better to hold up to him only the weakness of the will, so that he endeavours to remedy this weakness and now struggles in prayer to strengthen the will. For the strength can be given to him by God, but the will cannot be forcibly stimulated into action. He must strive towards God of his own accord, then divine grace will also come to him and he will recognize his weakness in the face of the eternal deity....

Amen

This proclamation is used in the following themebook:

Themebook	Title	Download
111	Divine Grace	ePub   PDF   Kindle

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