Transcription
[Music] In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Director, all our actions by Your holy inspirations and carry them on by Your gracious assistance, so that in every prayer and work of ours, may begin from You and by You be happily ended, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our Lady of Divine Grace, pray for us.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Okay, so this is on predestination. If you ask the average Catholic, even the layman, does the Church believe in predestination? The first thing that comes to mind is Calvin, and they'll say, "No, we don't believe in predestination." When actually, it's been formally defined that we do believe in predestination. It's just how it's to be understood is very different from the way Calvin actually understood it.
Before we actually talk about predestination, I want to precursor this with a couple of things because sometimes when people think of predestination, they tend to think that God's will is that in creating certain people, he creates them to be damned. And that's not exactly what's happening there. So, okay, so there's a few doctrines we want to talk about first before we go on to that. So it's a backdrop to understanding how predestination for Catholics actually worked.
Okay, so the Church has rejected the limitation of the Divine Will for salvation only to the predestined. They've rejected that proposition that God's will for that his will for salvation is limited only to the predestinate, that is, those who are going to finally make it to heaven. In fact, despite men's sins, God truly and earnestly desires the salvation of all men. And it says that that's intensified, *proximus*, which basically means if you deny that, you're going to end up in heresy in some fashion. So, basically, what that means is that God wills that all men be saved in His general will. So this means that He desires not only the salvation of the predestinate, but at least the faithful, and if not all men. And the more common opinion, at least today, is that God desires the salvation of all men. That means that our wills, it does not mean that that will will actually bring about a change or that the particular effect that the person's actually saved.
Second, God gives all the just sufficient grace. By the just, we mean people who are in the state of grace. Or God gives everybody who's in the state of grace everything that is, He gives them sufficient grace for the observation of the divine commandments. What does that actually mean? What it means is that if you're in the state of grace, God will always provide you with enough sufficient grace in order to remain in the state of grace. It is not to commit mortal sin. It doesn't mean you don't, because that's your own choice, but it gives you enough grace, sufficient grace, in order to remain saved. This is defined at the Council of Orange.
Third, God gives all the faithful who are sinners sufficient grace for conversion. So, what does that mean? That everybody who's in the state of mortal sin but has been baptized and believes in the Catholic faith, etc., God will, God gives them sufficient grace for conversion. It doesn't mean He gives it to them their whole life, it just means at some point He gives it to them so that they will convert. In other words, now, some theologians say this means that God does not entirely withdraw His grace even from the blood and blinded and hardened sinners. That's not exactly St. Alphonsus of Liguori's theory and other theories. It's not the common opinion. The common opinion means that almost all the theologians believe it, except for just a few. The more common opinion, it's probably the more common opinion, that God actually gives everybody sufficient grace to be saved. Or not every, sorry, that God gives the sinners sufficient grace to convert, and that He doesn't retract that at any particular point in his life. But that's not a consensus of theologians. It's the common opinion that God gives the people who are sinners sufficient grace at some point they're allowed to be saved, but not always, that is, through their whole life. Because St. Alphonsus says at a certain point, God says, "That's enough." He pulls the plug on the person's giving them actual graces in order to get them to convert.
Fourth, God gives all innocent unbelievers, that is, the people who don't believe in the Catholic faith, sufficient grace to achieve eternal salvation. This is *de fide*. Basically, what this means is that God gives everybody sufficient grace to be saved. Now, that brings up a very important distinction between sufficient and efficient grace. Sufficient grace is that grace that is enough for the person to actually convert or to be saved. Efficient grace is the grace that causes the person to be saved, actually makes them be saved. And so, this is that distinction is something that led to a whole series of discussions theologically in the latter part of the Middle Ages and the earlier part of the 16th, all the way up to about the 16th century. So there was a lot of discussion until finally a Pope who kind of put an end to it. But that just basically means that God gives everybody sufficient grace to be saved. It doesn't mean everybody's saved, just means God gives everybody sufficient grace to be saved.
Okay, so that's the backdrop to the Church's doctrine on predestination. So, what is predestination? Predestination is taken to mean an eternal divine resolve of will. What does that mean? Basically, what it means is that God, from all eternity, has chosen specific people to be saved. So, if you look at the term "elect," it comes from the Latin word *eligere*, which means to choose. It's the ones that He is, these are the people that He is choosing to be with Him in heaven.
So, in the narrow sense, one understands it to refer to the supernatural final destination of rational creatures. In other words, predestination is, it deals with that specific individuals God predestined that they will end up in certain places, basically, whether the object of this be their acceptance into eternal bliss or the exclusion therefrom. That is, whether they're going to end up in heaven or hell. In other words, ultimately, God gets to choose who's going to be in heaven and who's not going to be in heaven. That's basically the gist of it. We'll see a little bit later, this brings up a whole series of discussions in relationship to it. Part of this, I mean, even Christ in the New Testament talks about the elect quite a few times. And this is an important point because the elect means it's the people that God has chosen. The real question becomes later, which we'll see a little later, is what role do we play in His choice of that? That's the only question. But ultimately, who's in heaven and who's not is at His discretion, not ours. And we, we can't determine our place. We can't determine that we're going to get to heaven. He has to choose this, and we cooperate, etc.
Predestination implies an act of the divine intellect and will, of foreknowledge and predetermination. So, predestination includes two things. The first is foreknowledge on the side of God, because God sees the totality of the whole of history at, in front of Him, at a glance. He sees it all. And because He's just in the eternal now, so everything that ever was, everything that ever will be, He sees. In fact, everything we're going to do when we get into the, what's called the *aevum*, which is after time ends and we enter into that state that the angels are in, that will go on forever. He sees all of that, everything, the whole totality of it going on forever. He sees it all in one glance. So He actually knows already whether you're going to, He already sees you saved. He sees you enjoying heaven now. He sees you, even sees you enjoying it now, even though right now you're still, you're currently in this state. So He has that foreknowledge.
It's important to understand that the foreknowledge is not causative. What does that mean? It means that there has to be a separate cause in addition to His knowledge that determines whether you're in heaven or in hell. In other words, because He sees it, doesn't mean He's the cause of your choice for eternal perdition, for example. It's not like God causes you to commit mortal sin, which is more along the Calvin line. So, here's, no, the foreknowledge doesn't cause it. It's just the knowledge that He has of it. Just as you're listening to me, you're listening to me give this conference. Your knowledge of what I'm saying doesn't mean you're the cause of it. It just means that you're, you're knowledgeable of it. So even though He foresees it, and His knowledge is infallible, we see this a little bit later, that does not change the cause of it.
The other one is that there's predetermination. So this is what's the cause. It's God's will. So this is the foreknowledge in the intellect, God's intellect, He sees what you're doing and what you will do, where you'll end up. And then the predetermination is in the will. He chooses from all eternity that certain people are just going to be in heaven, and some are not. It's just the gist of it.
Now, obviously, part of this, the cause here, we're talking about the first cause. And the first cause is the one that causes all the other causes to be able to do their thing. It's like electricity, right? So, you know, you can have all these different lights, and they can't do anything unless you plug them in. Once you plug them in, the electricity is kind of like the first cause because it causes all the lights to light up, right? But without the first cause, the second causes can't do their things. So God is always the first cause in relationship to us. That's why Christ said, "Without Me, you can do nothing." If He doesn't cause even the things we're doing, then we can't do them.
So, on the side of the predetermination, God chooses in His will, because His will is perfectly free, then His will, in making these determinations, means that it's free. What's this really mean? Okay, let's talk a little bit about free will. This will be helpful for you. Free will, it's kind of interesting because in the Latin, the term for free will is *liberum arbitrium*. For you Latin fans, it means free determination. *Arbitrium* means that in arbitration, you're determining certain things. And so there's a certain freedom in relationship to different, different goods. You're going to determine that this is going to be the thing that's going to occur, and this one isn't. That's what happens in your free choice. In God's free will, because His will is free, when He makes these determinations in relationship to us, because everything He does in relationship to us is subject to His free will. What does that mean? Well, an essence, something is necessary because it can't be otherwise. That's the formal definition of necessity: that which cannot be otherwise than it is. Right? So, but there's a distinction between what we call absolute necessity. So, for example, in order for us to exist, it's absolutely necessary that God exists. It's absolutely necessary because without Him causing us to exist, we simply wouldn't exist. There's no other possibility. It cannot be otherwise. So that would be an example of an absolute necessity.
Then there's what we call a conditional necessity, and this is based upon a set of conditions. This thing necessarily follows. So, for example, if you throw a man out of an airplane or off of a building, of necessity, he's going to hit the ground, right? Unless there's a miracle. It's miraculous. But we're talking about, given the condition of, you know, throwing him off the roof, then we know that this, of necessity, is going to happen. Okay, that's going to happen in relationship to God. God is perfectly free. God is completely free in the creation. He did not have to create. There was no conditional necessity at all in the actual creation itself. Okay, He was entirely free to do this. Then, so, but that's also true in relationship to salvation. There's no precondition on God in relationship to any particular creature that determines that, that of necessity, this person would be saved. It's entirely at His free will. He's not required to save anybody. Ultimately, but there is in creation, once He created it, then of necessity, certain things will follow. So, once He chose to save certain people, of necessity, these people will be saved. That's what it basically means. So, in relationship to creation and God, there's only conditional necessity.
I realize this is getting pretty heavy, but bear with me. So, what does this mean? It means that God foreknows and predetermines in the predestination what's going to happen. St. Thomas says that the preparation of grace in the present life, that God predestined that He will prepare certain people in this life so that they will reach the glory that He predestined them for. That's what that means. So, if God wants, we'll just say John wants Joe and Jane to be saved, Joe and Jane to be saved, then that means that in the course of their life, so this is the point in their life where they are actually saved, that is, where they die in the state of grace and God judges that they will be going into heaven, which is the state of glory. If He chooses, "I want Jane and Joe to be in heaven," that means that in their earlier parts of their life, or their life, it will lead up to that. God is going to prepare them for that process. That's what we actually understand by predestination. It's not just at this moment that they're saved, but that there's preparation of grace that occurs throughout the course of life. This is why the Church will say things like, "Saying the Rosary every day is a sign of predestination." It's a sign. It's not, we can't be certain about them, but in this life. But it's a sign of predestination.
This is one of the reasons why I often tell, you know, you hear about people who are in Purgatory, you know, and they'll appear to certain people, they say, "Well, I wish I could go back in life and work out, you know, do certain things to cut down my time in Purgatory." Well, that's nice to say when you know that your salvation is certain after your death, then you know with certitude what your predestination is. But before then, you don't know. We'll see this a little bit later, you don't know. And so this is why in this life, we have to continue working on it. It's why St. Paul says, you know, "Work out your salvation in fear and trembling," right? In other words, because we don't know exactly, then we need to prepare. And that means because God is preparing it, we need to cooperate with Him as much as possible. That cooperation with Him on our part is the sign of predestination.
God, by His eternal resolve of will, has predetermined certain men to eternal blessedness. This is formally defined, insofar as it was the consistent teaching throughout the history of the Church, and it was also defined at the Council of Trent. So, God has predetermined certain men to eternal blessedness. That we know is *de fide*. The reality of predestination is clearly attested to in Romans 8:29. So, we hear St. Paul saying, "For whom He foreknew," so God had foreknowledge, as St. Paul is saying, "He also predestined," that's over here, predetermination, "to be made conformable to the image of His Son." So, there are certain people that God was going to conform to His Son, since they would be saved. So, this is writing in Scripture, "that He might be firstborn among many brethren. And whom He predestined, them He also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified." So, what St. Paul is saying is that God, in His foreknowledge and predetermination, knew that Joe and Jane were going to be in heaven. And so He set about doing those things in this life which would prepare them, so that at this moment, they were saved. And this is all at God's discretion.
The difficulty with people like Calvin is, he wants to say that everything is of necessity. You have to remember, who He chooses is entirely at His free will. There's no necessity in relationship to it. Once He's chosen it, then it's a conditional necessity. Once God has chosen that some would be saved, they will be saved. The problem is, we don't know who that is.
The elements are necessary for the complete, for for predestination, namely, that there has to be foreknowledge and predetermination on the side of God. But then there has to be stages that occur in this life which lead up to that. And it's in this part, it's in the stages in this life leading up to it, that we cooperate with God in the process of being saved. That's our side of it, is the cooperation side. The main difficulty, therefore.
Okay, so this is the, that's the doctrine of predestination. The difficulty of the doctrine of predestination lies in the question of whether God's eternal resolve of predestination has been taken with or without the consideration of this cooperation and merit. That is, the merit that we produce in this life. So, in other words, if I cooperate with God through this process, do I merit my salvation? That's the question, ultimately.
Okay, predestination. So, in relationship to the first graces and the things that come along in the preparatory stage towards salvation, they're outside our ability to merit. So, like first grace, to go from being in the state of mortal sin to being in the state of grace, on the side of the preparation which He predetermines, that's entirely up to God, because you cannot merit any, you cannot merit any further increase in sanctifying grace or actual grace without being in the state of grace. It's formally defined by the Church by in several councils. So, it's not something that's open to discussion. Because I recently, I've been mentioning this in conferences, and people are just like, "So, if I do, if I perform an act in the state of mortal sin, it merits in the eyes of God?" I said, "Yeah, nothing. Nothing. It doesn't mean it's not a good act, it just means it doesn't merit anything." By merit, we mean either merit your salvation, merit a higher place in heaven.
Then the question arises whether predestination occurs by reason of the foreseen supernatural merits of man, without the consideration of them. Okay, in other words, this is the question. So, God foreknew that you were going to be saved, and He predetermined it. But did it wasn't the type of thing that His foreknowledge saw that you would cooperate with Him, and therefore He, from basically seeing that you cooperate, chose therefore to give you the graces to be saved? Or was it the other way around? He chose that you're going to be saved, and therefore gave you the graces so that you would actually cooperate with that process? That's where the debate ends up pretty heated in the history of the Church. So, the real question becomes whether man's merit has any impact on the predetermination on the side of God. That's where the real debate is.
St. Thomas and also St. Augustine, Suarez, and Bellarmine teach what's called an absolute predestination in relationship to this point. That is, the actual point of being saved, that is, the glory. God only, God can choose this in a predetermined way, with, and He doesn't take into consideration any of the preparation. And so that's what they say is that God predetermines this, that certain people are going to be saved. That is, to the glory. According to them, God freely resolves from all eternity, without consideration of the merits of man's grace, to call certain men to beatification and therefore to bestow on them graces which will infallibly secure the execution of the divine decree. What does this mean? Okay, we got to go back and talk about this. There's a difference between sufficient grace and efficient grace. Sufficient grace is enough grace for the person to be able to perform the action that they need to do. And in this particular case, this is sometimes called cooperating grace. This is the graces that you can cooperate with. Efficient grace is one in which there is no cooperation. Or operating graces, or yeah, the cooperating graces. What does this mean? There are certain graces that we receive that God infuses in our intellect and our will, which infallibly inclines us to perform a specific kind of act, and we have no control over it. Let me give you an example. Have you ever had an experience where you know, you were just kind of walking along, and it didn't have anything to do with any prayer or grace that you were doing before that, and all of a sudden God gave you this grace to see something about yourself that you had never seen before? That's an operating grace. You see it, you have no control over it. You see it. Now, subsequently to that, you can decide whether you're going to accept that truth or not. But the actual, actual seeing it, you have no control over. That's an operating grace. It's an efficient grace. Cooperating grace, the stuff that follows afterwards. So, okay, I realized that I've got a serious problem. Take that for an example. I hope I know it's better. Just say I do. So, I have a serious pride problem. I see, God gives me the grace to see, "You have a serious problem." Right? And you can't change. But subsequently to that, when He gives you the grace, okay, then you need to start making acts of humility or what have you. Those you can cooperate with or not. Okay. So, this efficient grace. Okay. So, this efficient grace is these distinct between efficient, efficient grace really boils down to this moment of our salvation when we die. Is that, is that the grace that God gives us at our death in order to remain steadfast? Efficient grace, or sufficient grace, is something you can cooperate with or not. It's the graces throughout our, the graces that are of our salvation throughout history, which determines our eternal destination. Cooperating graces, our operating graces. Well, St. Thomas, Aquinas, Bellarmine, Suarez, and a majority of the Thomistic tradition, will say that at this moment of our salvation, it's an efficient grace, and it has to be an efficient grace. And the reason it has to be an efficient grace is because a cooperating grace, by nature, involves a secondary cause. What does that mean? So, a secondary cause. So, as I mentioned, God is the primary cause. He causes us to exist. He causes all our actions to exist, etc. So, we can't do anything without Him being the primary cause. In cooperating grace, there's a secondary cause in the sense that God gives us the grace, and then we can cooperate with it, and then from that gain some kind of a merit. And so, as a result of that, we, as the secondary cause, are involved in bringing about the effect, that is, the grace of the merit. The problem is, is that to be saved means to have the beatific vision. And between us and that vision is an infinite gap. In order to bridge that infinite gap, you cannot have a secondary cause, because secondary causes always introduce limitations into the process. And as a result, you, it, the, that grace to actually go from, you know, this life to seeing God face to face, has to be an efficient grace. It has to be. Okay. So, that's why, so Thomas ends up saying that ultimately, this choice of God's up here, because this is an efficient grace, and it can only be God causing it for us to go from us to seeing the beatific vision, and God foresees that it's because it's an efficient grace, it's hidden, because there can't be any limitation introduced into it. Therefore, our merits in this life have really no bearing on His choice of who goes and who doesn't. That's the basic argument. It's a bit involved, but it gives you a sense of why they say that.
Part of it is also, is this thing, is God's free choice or not? In other words, does God, if God only chooses to come into heaven those who choose Him, essentially? That is, is His choice of people's predestination all to determine upon the will of the creature? Then, so, in their mind, basically, what this does is, is that then there really doesn't, you know, they're not really elect, they're just, they themselves are choosing it, and it detracts from God. This process of God bridging, of God's center. And they told discussion of efficient grace, it's not something our salvation, getting ourselves to heaven, to seeing Him face to face, is not something we can do. He has to do it, right? So that's why they say this is very, the idea of the other side, which we'll talk about in a minute, is very problematic in their mind.
So, in time, God first gives the predestined effective or efficient graces, and then eternal bliss as a result of the merits which flow from their free cooperation with the grace. So, basically, as I mentioned, He predetermines, He gives the efficient, He gives them efficient graces, and then also cooperating graces. They cooperate with that, and then because of their cooperation, part, and because He's chosen it, then He gives them the reward of seeing Him face to face.
The Molinists, however, it's a little bit different. They teach a conditioned predestination to glory alone. That, according to them, God, by His what they call *scientia media*, that's their, it's the mediate knowledge, talk about that in a minute. *Scientia media* sees beforehand how men would freely react to various orders of grace. In light of this knowledge, He chooses, according to His free pleasure, a fixed and definite order of grace. Now, by His *scientia visionis*, it is the knowledge of vision, He knows infallibly in advance what use the individual man will make of the grace bestowed upon him. He therefore elects or chooses for eternal life those who, by virtue of their foreseen merits, perseveringly cooperate with grace. So, it's what I just described. The *scientia media* means that God has foreknowledge for everything that's ever going to occur, and He also knows, because of everything that's going to occur, He knows exactly how you're going to react when He gives X, Y, and Z grace. As a result of that, because He knows how you're going to do that, then for the people that He knows just aren't going to accept His grace, He produces them to be reprobates as to hell. And those who are going to react, He predestines them to heaven, and then He prepares them through the process. The difficulty of it is, is that it makes one's salvation contingent upon human will. That's where that the problem that the people tend to see.
Now, on the other hand, the real difficulty that's the other side, that is the Molinists present, is that, well, they'll say, "Wait a minute, you get people who get to go to heaven and people get to go to hell, and really, there's nothing they can really do about it, right?" And actually, the St. Thomas, the Thomistic group, replies, "No, that's actually not true. God does predetermine it, but they still do the cooperation thing along the way." So, it's not like there's not, they're not doing anything to achieve their salvation. It just means that God predetermines that, many gives them graces in order to achieve it, and they cooperate with it. It's just that their cooperation is not the thing that determined whether God chose them or not.
Another way to look at it is this: that God created this whole hierarchy in heaven of grace, and it means that in that hierarchy of grace, where the angels fell, there were gaps. And so when creating human beings, and by the way, this whole predestination question actually even applies to the angels. God knew which ones were going to fall and which ones weren't. The real question is, who did He give those graces to and who didn't? But it means to give them all sufficient grace to be saved. But, you know, they're still in the same boat we are, or were they? They're not the same boat. So, anyway, the point being is, is that there were these gaps, and so God chose that He would create certain people to fill these gaps, right? And so, as a result of that, then He then basically wrote the story of their life, that is, He presented the various circumstances and prepared them with various choices so that they would fill these particular positions in heaven.
St. Thomas considered the Molinists to be quasi-heretical. I mean, they don't say they're heretical because they haven't been formally condemned, although they say that they were leading up to condemnation. And at a certain point, this debate became so heated that the Church said, "No more. We're not going to talk about it anymore." There are difficulties ultimately that remain on both sides of this, because even when God, even if, okay, let's take the segment where we all reckon with the Thomistic position, that God predetermines with no consideration of the antecedent merit of the individual. Antecedent to the merit of the individual, then basically what that means is, is even if that's true, why He chooses certain people and not others, His will is not capricious. There is wisdom to it. On the other hand, the wisdom doesn't determine His choice of that. So, it's all a mystery, and we won't fully even grasp it, even in heaven, fully. So, it's a mystery as to why He chooses certain people and doesn't choose others.
It should also be observed that, if even in the Thomistic situation, if He does actually, the Thomistic position, if He does predetermine this without in the condition of the antecedent, that doesn't mean that the people who end up in hell, that they didn't cause their own ending up being in hell, because they made the choices along the way. They got the sufficient graces, but they made the choices along the way to end up in hell. So, and they made the choices to commit mortal sin. And so, it's being in hell, it basically boils down to, as the Church has always said and Saints always said, being in hell is entirely your own fault. Being in heaven is entirely to God's glory. So, that's because you couldn't even do any cooperate, even a lot, because even to cooperate with God along the way requires grace.
So, the difficulty remains on both sides of the discussion. Not, no sides of the system are not, there's no perfection yet. Both, neither one perfectly answers the problems. It's the same problem with this whole business of efficient and sufficient grace. At this point, yeah, he's at the point of your salvation. It's not every single system that's been proposed to try and explain this mystery and this process has always only explained certain aspects of it and always falling short in others.
So, in relationship to that debate, we don't have full knowledge. My own personal opinion, news, because I'm a Thomist, and having read St. Thomas and stuff, his stuff seems much more clear and reasonable and congruous with what we know about doctrines of God and grace, etc., than the Molinist position.
What are the properties of predestination? There are two. The first is immutability. The predestination, in the act of the divine knowledge and will, is as immutable as the divine essence itself. God doesn't change His mind. Once He's made the choice, that's it. The number of those who are predestined in the book of life is formally and materially fixed. That is, God knows and determines with infallible certainty in advance how many and which will be saved. What is the number of the predestination? In the end, only God knows. There's all sorts of debate about that, among even among the Saints.
Uncertainty. That's the second one. The Council of Trent declared against Calvin that certainty in regard to one's predestination can be attained only by special revelation. In other words, Calvin thought that you could know that someone was a reprobate or an elect in this life. And we can't know that. That's why we have to continue cooperating and working with it. What is that? Well, some people say, "Well, if it's already predetermined, why should I bother?" Well, because if you, if you're going to be in heaven, then God is preparing you, and you better go along with the preparation. If you decide, "Well, I'm just not going to do anything, just presume I'm going to get to heaven," that's probably a sign you're a reprobate, radically.
So, we cannot have certainty in this life about it, and therefore we have to, in fear and trembling, work out our salvation. So, this is the general structure of the process. It's a bit involved, but it does give you a sense of what the Saints were actually grappling with. The Church has defined that there is predestination, that ultimately God's will is foreknowledge and predetermination, and we see that right in Revelation, St. Paul. The only real question is, is what does the role of human merit play in God's consideration when He predestined you or not? That's the only question that remains. And with Calvin, he removed merit entirely. He said, "Because God predetermined it, therefore there was absolutely no role for human merit whatsoever." Even in the Thomistic role, even the Thomists, no, there's a role for merit. It is the merit that is that process by which God has given you to the place He wants you to be. Whereas with Calvin, there's nothing you can do. You're going to go to hell or you're going to go to heaven, so you might as well just go along for the ride.
Any questions? Solutions? And would have a solution? All right, that's where you can give them grace. Yeah, that's exactly it. So, St. Thomas asks a question, "What about the guy that gets to see a really bad life that God predestined to be saved?" And basically, it's the Hound of Heaven thing, right? God just starts giving him graces and pastoring him until he gets his act together. So, even if we've, even if the person has committed, you know, mortal sins, and God wants them to be saved, He will give them graces along the way in order to be saved. But what this is an important point, because if we're working on our spiritual life and we continue to work, and that's our focus, that's a sign. It's not an absolute, but that's a sign of predestination because it's a sign that He's prepping us to get here, right? Whereas the people who just turn away from God and don't want that, that's a sign of damnation, they're reprobation. It doesn't mean that that's necessarily going to happen to them, because like I said, later in their life, God might start giving them the grace. Just right now, He's not. So, if He intends that they are predestined, then He'll give them the graces later. That's why they're only signs, they're not, we don't have certitude in relationship to it.
Yes. Yes, right. Is that just, would you just call that just? Yes, I do. That's right. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's a bit of a difference. Is that there's some things that, there's some graces that God gives to us without anybody doing anything on to help us. He just gives it to bestow because He wants certain things. Like St. Paul, probably, you know, his conversion. Yeah, it doesn't have to be someone praying. It can just, boom, you can just do it. On the other hand, He may be, He may say, "Well, I want this person to be in heaven, but I want the conditions which are going to be necessary for your salvation to occur in the preparatory process by other people praying for him, or I want this person, part of their merit will be that this person says this prayer so that at this moment I'll give them the grace so that can happen to that." That's correct. Yeah. Which, you know, but there are certain things, I would say, I don't know if I'd be praying for. Like, there's one university where the students decided they were all going to start praying for St. Augustine's conversion. And like, you know, I think there's other things that are probably a little more important at this stage. And you mean, I think you should be, you know, the salvation of your brother who's not believing the Catholic faith. On the other hand, with things like suicide, you can tell people, "Pray that the person receives, before they die, the grace of repentance because God will foresee that, and then He can give it." Retroactive. I mean, it's retroactive in relationship to us, but with Him, He sees it at the same time. Just to Him, in relationship to Him, merit is not time, but it's not, He's not bound by time, right? Yeah, that's right. Just the whole thing, just everything explaining. Well, it does, are the preparatory side of things, ultimately. So, I mean, I suppose in a certain sense, even at the moment of your salvation, that's there, like the ultimate act of mercy because of all the bad things you did beforehand. But, but it's all, that His mercy is that the application of the loosening of the bonds of justice throughout the preparatory stage. Any other questions?
Okay, if you'll kneel, I'll give you a blessing.
Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel. Amen. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
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