Grace
"But grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 3:18
"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8: 3
Grace is love given freely by God to you. It is God's powerful force of love within us. It fills your body and your soul to the very top so you can love. There is sanctifying grace and actual grace. Sanctifying grace is the life of God within you. In other words, it is God's gift of divine life into man's soul. It's what stays in your soul and it's what makes your soul holy. It IS supernatural life. God's free and generous gift is also called the "state of grace." Baptism puts sanctifying grace into your soul for the first time. You need sanctifying grace so you are able to live in Heaven (to share in God's happiness) and be in the perfect union with God, the source of all life. It really transforms your soul, actually wiping away our sins, makin it spotless and holy. If this kind of grace is in your soul when you die, you can live in Heaven (but you may need your soul first purified in Purgatory). If however, you are in a state of mortal sin (the serious kind), you cannot live in heaven. So you can lose sanctifying grace by committing a mortal sin because it destroy God's life in your soul. Once you have achieved sanctifying grace, you can increase it by doing good actions, receiving Communion and other sacraments, saying prayers, performing good works. You can serve the community of God through good works toward the sick and needy, and keeping God's commandments. You can also serve God through acts of charity through His love and acting out the virtues. You need to work on it to keep it by responding to His actual graces and continue to seek these actual graces ... a totally different kind of grace.
Actual grace is an undeserved favor or gift from God or you can think of it as a push of encouragement. You can think of it as a kind of helping grace or God's support for us in our day to day life. It kind of acts on the soul from the outside. It gets you moving so it's like a kick in the pants. With God's help, it allows you to act above your nature. When God gives you these divine pushes, all you have to do is go along with them. He may move you to do an act of faith or go to confession where through your reconciliation you will receive more sanctifying grace. Then you can have supernatural life again, But you can lose it very easily by committing a mortal sin. Venial sins don't do this but they can weaken us making you more distant from God. Using God's gift of free will or freedom of choice, you are called to accept the divine love of God. Grace gives you the ability to live life according to the love of God and the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is received and celebrated in community with each other. You are empowered to forgive, to accept without judgment, to give without asking for return, to love without end. This is a power that can do marvelous things! It can heal and bind people together, give comfort and peace, offer affectionate love and create new persons, rest peacefully and disturb the comfortable! So remember no matter what you do, there is nothing that can separate you from God's love. It's not about what you've done ... we really can't do enough. It's about God extending his grace to you because of God's crazy love for you! There's really nothing else like it in all the world!
Examples of grace from the Bible:
Jesus showed grace to Zacchaeus, a rich cheating tax collector when he invited himself to to stay at his house. He even said the name of Peter, the disiple who denied knowing Christ when Jesus returned from the dead and asked him if he loved Him....now that is God's amazing grace! Just think, the disciples didn't even get the concept of grace. Although everybody in town hated Zaccheus and looked down upon him as a crook, Jesus saw something different. He saw that Zaccheus had a new heart. Jesus saw that Zaccheus was sincerely seeking Him out. Zaccheus came seeking the Lord's forgiveness, he came seeking Him for direction, and Jesus told him then and there that He would come spend time with him at his house. Zaccheus may not even have known that he was lost, but he obviously knew that something in his life wasn't right. Fortunately for him, he went to the right person (Jesus Christ), and Zaccheus went from being a known sinner to becoming a child of God!
Jesus gave Peter a second chance. After Christ was crucified and rose from the dead, He appeared to His disciples. In front of everybody, Jesus specifically asked Peter if he loved Him. And when Peter said, "Yes, Lord, you know I love you," Jesus told Peter, "Feed my sheep" (John 21:15-19). What the Lord meant by that was that He wanted Peter to take on the role of a leader. Jesus knew that Peter was truly sorry for denying Him in the past, and he showed Peter that He still believed in him and that He wanted to use him for great things.
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Faith Lessons for our children to teach God's values and standards. Guidelines for parents in their role as primary educators and gatekeepers of the home when faced by negative pressures by their children and other parents. We need to communicate the Catholic faith to the next generation so it takes hold and endures. Our role is basically to assist the Holy Spirit's transforming work. Our kids deserve the fullness of our Catholic faith (our roots) and wings to allow them to fly!
Ask Yourself These Questions
Do you bring up God in your day-to-day living experiences to your kids? Are we raising kids who are transfixed by handheld devices all the time with no communal activities? Would you invite some of the performers of the music that your child may listen to into your family room? Have you taken the time to teach your children the virtues of purity and that their bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, or did you instead choose to teach your children about condoms, birth control, and safe sex? Do you, by example and words, stress a Godly attitude towards drinking and drugs, or are you waiting for some school program to give your child a "just say no" lesson? Do you keep your children accountable to you as their parent and guardian, or are you more interested in trying to be their best friend and get them to like you? Does your home live by the words in Joshua "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" or have you left your children to find their own way in this world full of temptations, sins, and evil?
Be different from your parents and don’t skirt the moral questions. It is proven that parents have the greatest impact on whether kids engage in premarital sex, smoke, get tattoos or partake in other risky behaviors. Yet parents often remain mum on these topics. The more that kids are barraged with information from the Internet, from media, and from electronic devices they’re plugged into, the smaller the circle of voices they trust.
The perfect time to talk to your child about drugs is when you think they're too young to talk about using drugs. Talk to your child before someone else does. So too, we must initiate our children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith and teach them the morals and values of our faith. It can be such an awesome duty to help them grow in faith by the witness of a Catholic life in keeping with the Gospel. The great principles of God are to be taught, practiced and cultivated in the home by us, their primary educators.
Let them see how your faith affects every aspect of your life and how Jesus Christ is your compass in making the moral decisions in your life. It means your faith is not just being a Sunday Catholic and not just something that you do but how you live, so much a part of your life so that you can’t help but bring it up at the dinner table. You end up talking about what happened in the news or praying for people who are sick and hurting.
If you want your kids and their friends to be in your company, stock the fridge with food, schedule game or movies nights for them, create an inviting fun atmosphere.
To make Mass more of a time that they get to go to church rather than have to go, try asking your kids what they thought of the Sunday homily. Ask them what they might have said about the Gospel if they’d given the homily that day.
It means not giving into letting a child have a TV or computer in their room but in a common area that is supervised. We also should be attending to what, and how much, electronic entertainment kids consume: TV, movies, music, video games, web activity...there's pluggedin.com and Godtube as alternative tools!
Tell your kids why you refuse to buy their clothing from Abercrombie & Fitch (with their advertising of models barely clothed). at the very least they’ll respect you for your point of view.
We must respect our children's faith journeys. However, while we can do many things for our children, we have to let them find their own way to God, even if means watching them try things we ourselves have tried and know lead to dead ends, even after they leave home. In their very real struggles to find God, the nourishment they need is from you. So live your faith out loud. Live it openly at home so your children catch it, learn it,will ask about, and grow in it. That’s how faith gets in them!
"My son, if your heart be wise, my own heart also will rejoice; And my inmost being will exult, when your lips speak what is right." Proverbs 23:15-16
Be different from your parents and don’t skirt the moral questions. It is proven that parents have the greatest impact on whether kids engage in premarital sex, smoke, get tattoos or partake in other risky behaviors. Yet parents often remain mum on these topics. The more that kids are barraged with information from the Internet, from media, and from electronic devices they’re plugged into, the smaller the circle of voices they trust.
The perfect time to talk to your child about drugs is when you think they're too young to talk about using drugs. Talk to your child before someone else does. So too, we must initiate our children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith and teach them the morals and values of our faith. It can be such an awesome duty to help them grow in faith by the witness of a Catholic life in keeping with the Gospel. The great principles of God are to be taught, practiced and cultivated in the home by us, their primary educators.
Let them see how your faith affects every aspect of your life and how Jesus Christ is your compass in making the moral decisions in your life. It means your faith is not just being a Sunday Catholic and not just something that you do but how you live, so much a part of your life so that you can’t help but bring it up at the dinner table. You end up talking about what happened in the news or praying for people who are sick and hurting.
If you want your kids and their friends to be in your company, stock the fridge with food, schedule game or movies nights for them, create an inviting fun atmosphere.
To make Mass more of a time that they get to go to church rather than have to go, try asking your kids what they thought of the Sunday homily. Ask them what they might have said about the Gospel if they’d given the homily that day.
It means not giving into letting a child have a TV or computer in their room but in a common area that is supervised. We also should be attending to what, and how much, electronic entertainment kids consume: TV, movies, music, video games, web activity...there's pluggedin.com and Godtube as alternative tools!
Tell your kids why you refuse to buy their clothing from Abercrombie & Fitch (with their advertising of models barely clothed). at the very least they’ll respect you for your point of view.
We must respect our children's faith journeys. However, while we can do many things for our children, we have to let them find their own way to God, even if means watching them try things we ourselves have tried and know lead to dead ends, even after they leave home. In their very real struggles to find God, the nourishment they need is from you. So live your faith out loud. Live it openly at home so your children catch it, learn it,will ask about, and grow in it. That’s how faith gets in them!
"My son, if your heart be wise, my own heart also will rejoice; And my inmost being will exult, when your lips speak what is right." Proverbs 23:15-16
Followers
Purpose of my blog
- What are parents to do?
- When I was putting together my webpage, catholicresourcepages, I found that there are no real Catholic devotions online. After finishing Jeff Cavins Great Adventure Bible Study, reading up on the catechism, and other resources, I decided to write posts on catechism topics like sexuality, the deadly sins and heavenly virtues, the fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit and other everyday themes of life. When we school our kids in the faith, point our kids toward heaven, pray for them and release them into God's hands, our children will be able to grow into the people they were called to be and less likely fall away from going to Mass and slip spiritually. Fight back with my Faith Lessons so you can teach them the why's instead of just the don'ts...to help parents be armed with talking the faith during family prayer time...your kids will be listening even if you think they aren't since you'll be planting the seeds for them for the future! Thanks for visiting and guiding your child in truth. My hope is your kids will ask for them (when really it is the family togetherness that they are longing for).
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