brief meditations on magnanimty and grace

“I thank Thee, O MY GOD, for all the graces Thou hast granted me: especially for having purified me in the crucible of suffering.” ~ Saint Thérèse of Lisieux



Today is the Feast day of the beautiful Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the saint for whom all revolved around grace. The Gospel reading today plays in nicely with her feast and name... that of the Christ addressing his Disciples as they are disputing over who is the greatest:


"Whoever receives this child in my name receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
For the one who is least among all of you
is the one who is the greatest."

 The theme here of humility is often linked to child-likeness (http://morelacemoregrace.blogspot.com/2011/10/child-likeness.html). One must approach the Kingdom of God with the heart of a child. That is all very beautiful. What off the glaring contrast here of...you guessed it... magnanimity! TO be the greatest is to be the least, a classic paradox. But if i am the least I can't be the greatest but if I am the greatest and by being the least, am I really the least.............

sorry, ok

A brief note, as I am sure I have noted before, on the unity and integrity of the two virtues.

Prima facie, Aristotelean magnanimity seems to be in conflict with Christian revealed humility. “Humility is apparently opposed to the virtue of magnanimity, which aims at great things, whereas humility shuns them.” Magnanimity seems to involve a claiming of honor and maintaining a disdain for others which makes the virtue look remarkably like the Christian sin of pride. In the Gospel of Luke, Christ tells the Apostles to take less honors than they think they deserve, for they will be all the more honored and exalted in the next world. This commandment from Christ seems to endorse what Aristotle will discuss as smallness of soul. Christianity and Aristotelean magnanimity seemed diametrically opposed. Christianity shuns pride and yet, the magnanimous man is a man who claims honors and deserves honors, walks with a kind of swagger, and carries a certain disdain for others. This disdain, though, it not an animosity or hatred. Now, I wish to further suggest that Aquinas maintains the disdain, not animosity (which would be hateful and sinful) in the Summa through his discussion of the anti-pride of humilitas.

In Question 129, Article 3 of the Secunda Secundae, Aquinas argues, in the Reply to Objection 4
that:

"There is in man something great which he possesses through the gift of God; and
something defective which accrues to him through the weakness of nature. Accordingly
magnanimity makes a man deem himself worthy of great things in consideration of
the gifts he holds from God: thus if his soul is endowed with great virtue, magnanimity
makes him tend to perfectworks of virtue; and the same is to be said of the use of any
other good, such as science or external fortune. On the other hand,humility makes a man
think little of himself in consideration of his own deficiency, and magnanimity makes
him despise others in so far as they fall away from God's gifts: since he does not think so
much of others as to do anything wrong for their sake. Yet humility makes us honor others
and esteem them better than ourselves, in so far as we see some of God's gifts in them.
Hence it is written of the justman (Psalm 14:4): "In his sight a vile person is contemned
[Douay: 'The malignant is brought to nothing, but he glorifieth,' etc.]," which indicates
the contempt of magnanimity, "but he honoreth them that fear the Lord," which
points to the reverential bearing of humility. It is therefore evident that magnanimity
and humility are not contrary to one another, although they seem to tend in contrary
directions, because they proceed according to different considerations."

Humility and magnanimity, argues Aquinas, are not incompatible. They proceed, he says, according to different considerations; that is, they have different focii. Both involve an accurate judgment of their relative worth and greatness. Magnanimity regards one's (superior) relationship to other men; humility, however, regards one's (inferior) relationship to God.104 In his treatment of humility, Aquinas again draws the distinction between what is God-ly in man and what is creature-ly in man. He states, when answering the question of whether 'Whether one ought, by humility, to subject oneself to all men?,' that “We may consider two things in man, namely that which is God's, and that which is man's. Whatever pertains to defect is man's: but whatever pertains to man's welfare and perfection is God's...Now humility, as stated above (1,
ad 5; 2, ad 3), properly regards the reverence whereby man is subject to God. Wherefore every man, in respect of that which is his own, ought to subject himself to every neighbor, in respect of that which the latter has of God's”

So there we are...maybe one day I will actually my thorough paper I wrote on humility and magnanimity in Aquinas for the great Mary Keys...one day

I will however conclude with an essay I wrote for seminary last year on grace...

“Even the justice of God, by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all, and upon all them that believe in him: for there is no distinction. For all have sinned and do need the glory of God. Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to the showing of his justice, for the remission of former sins, through the forbearance of God, for the showing of his justice in this time: that he himself may be just and the justifier of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ”1

Through the Grace of God, we are saved! Grace, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, is first and foremost “the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us.”2 Grace (gratia, Χάρις), in general, is a supernatural gift of God to intellectual creatures for “the sake of our salvation.” Subjectively, grace signifies good will and benevolence but objectively, it designates every good favor that is received from God which proceeds from His Benevolence. Thus, grace is a gratuitous gift (donum gratuitum, beneficium). Our justification, St. Paul notes, comes from the grace of God; that “favor, the free and underserved help that God gives us to respond to his call and to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.”3

This unmerited gift from God can be divided into operative and co-operative grace. As Saint Augustine so eloquently notes, “God perfects within us by co-operation what he initiates by operation. For he operates first to make us will, and co-operates with those who will to make them perfect.”4 Now the operations by which God moves us to the Good are operations of grace. Thus, as the Angelic Doctor states, “grace may be understood in two ways, as the divine help by which God moves us to do and to will what is good, and as a habitual gift divinely bestowed on us. In either sense grace is appropriately divided into operative and co-operative grace.”5 This highlights the interaction between human free will (habitus) and God’s grace for the sake of justification for “He who created thee without thyself will not justify thee without thyself.”6 Operating grace refers to God’s gracious work in a sinner, i.e. God’s gracious “operating;” that prior movement of the free human will towards just acts. Co-operating grace is the human effect of God’s operating, namely, the free human will moving the person unto meritorious works and virtue (habitus). There is in this life, God’s constant grace which not only upholds our very existence but gently nudges the human to virtue and a fulfilled existence through man’s free co-operation with that grace.7 God’s free initiative demands mans’ free response for God has created man in his imago by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him.8 Hence, the Catechism notes that grace “is a participation in the life of God… [an introduction] into the intimacy of the Trinitarian life”9 for we are partakers of the divine nature as adopted sons in Christ Jesus; a life of communion of love that, by the very nature of love, is only entered into freely by mans’ co-operation with God’s freely given grace.10

We can divide grace in a second way; not by agent but by essence. There is actual grace, the grace of the moment, which is the grace granted by God for the performance of some act and is present and disappears with the act itself. On the contrary, there is habitual grace which causes a state of holiness, so that the mutual relations between these two kinds of grace are the relation between action and state, not those between actuality and potentiality. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call,11 is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification. Saint Paul, in fact, when referring to his own conversion refers to actual grace12 but it is habitual grace that leads to his, and our, justification. Finally, there is sanctifying grace, bestowed (normally) through the Sacraments, which is itself a “habitual gift;” a supernatural disposition aimed at not simply at the right ordering of acts (acts aimed to a proper τέλοϛ) but to a perfection in the soul which enables it to live with God and act in/through His Love.13

In a discussion of grace, one must note that it aims at a grand reversal of the mysterium iniquitatis14 man finds himself caused by that drop of poison known as Original Sin; “it is infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.” This sanctifying, or deifying, grace is what works towards our sanctification (along with our own co-operation).15 This reversal thus makes us greater than we were before our fall;16 a divinization won by our Sweet Redeemer for as Aquinas, “we, by our acts, have seized to merit Grace... [and] no one can merit for himself restoration after a fall...but God who gives it freely.”17 Thus the words of Hamlet seem most fitting: “What a piece of work is a man! / How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! / In form and moving, how express and admirable! / In action, how like an angel! / In apprehension, how like a god! / The beauty of the world! / The paragon of animals!”18

For this reason, then, this mysterium gratiae finds a proper role in a theological anthropology course; there is, in this mysterium gratiae, a fundamental role that both God and man play that aims towards man’s communion with God. It is through this sanctifying grace, this unmerited and freely given gift from God, that ‘the old man passes away and, behold, a new man is created in Christ.’19 As St. Thomas Aquinas again teaches, this sanctifying grace is more precious than all the treasures of world gathered together.20 The workings of grace in the life of man, then, is fundamentally ordered towards his end; there is something about man that is redeemable in the eyes of God21 and, thus being destined for a life with God, receives the sweet help of grace to aid the soul in its journey to God. Hence, the Dominican friars daily sing a hymn in honor of their father Saint Dominic: “O Lumen Ecclesiae, Doctor Veritatis, Rosa Patientiae, Ebur Castitatis, Aquam Sapientiae propinasti gratis, Praedicator gratiae, nos junge beatis.”22 This is the ultimate purpose of grace, and one’s study of grace and its role in the life of a Christian - the beatific vision of the Most Holy Trinity, sharing in God’s Divine intimacy for all eternity. Thus, let all Christians re-echo the words of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: “I thank Thee, O MY GOD, for all the graces Thou hast granted me: especially for having purified me in the crucible of suffering.”

Endnotes:
1 Romans 3:22-26
2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2003.
3 Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1996; cf. John 1:12-18; 17:3; Romans 8:14-17; 2 Peter 1:3-4
4 Augustine, De Grat. et Lib. Arb. 17
5 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IaIIae, q. 111, a. 2, corpus.
6 Augustine, De Verb. Apost., Sermo 15, cap. 2
7 For this reason, St. Thomas Aquinas stated that “complete obduracy” (obstinatio perfecta”, or absolute impossibility of conversion, begins only in hell itself “incomplete obduracy”, on the contrary, ever presents on earth in the enfeebled moral affections of the heart a point of contact through which the appeal of grace may obtain entrance.” (De Verti., Q. xxiv, a.11)
8 Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2002
9 Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1996
10 Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2002: “The soul only enters freely into the communion of love…”
11 Note the relationship to ἀρετή as virtue, or character excellence. One cannot simply perform a courageous act to be a man filled with the virtue of courage; rather, a courageous man is a man who consistently acts courageously.
12 cf. 1 Corinthians 15:10 – “But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace in me has not been void: but I have laboured more abundantly than all they. Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”
13 Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1999; As Saint Thérèse of Lisieux would pray: “I ask thee for myself and for those whom I hold dear, the grace to fulfill perfectly Thy Holy Will, to accept for love of Thee the joys and sorrows of this passing life, so that we may one day be united together in Heaven for all Eternity. Amen.”
14 cf. Romans 5:19; 2 Thessalonians 2:7-10; Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 386, 390, 396-399.
15 cf. John 4:14; 7:38-39
16 cf. The Exultet of the Easter Vigil, “O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem.”
17 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IaIIae, 114, 7; cf. Ezekiel 18:24
18 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2
19 2 Corinthians 5:17-18
20 cf. Matthew 6:20 - “But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth does consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal.”
21 cf. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene 2: “Alas, alas! Why, all the souls / That were forfeit once; / And He that might the vantage best / Have took found out the remedy.”
22 Light of the Church, Teacher of Truth, Rose of Patience, Ivory of Chastity, you freely offered the Waters of Wisdom, Preacher of Grace, unite us with the blessed.