​The Catechism writes beautifully about grace. But how can we make these
beautiful insights our own? History can help our understanding of them. Now, I suspect
that not many Catholics regularly discuss the merits of the Pelagian controversy around
the dinner table. However, it is an interesting place to start grappling with the doctrine of
grace. 1

The quest to understand the consequence of original sin began in the early
Church. The British-Romano theologian Pelagius (c.354-418) suggested that the sin of
Adam only affected Adam. Human beings are good. With our natural capacities of
reason and will, we can become righteous. He was quickly opposed by two formidable
figures, St. Jerome and St. Augustine. Pelagius seems to think that a Christian, by his
own powers, can be pure and good. Augustine argued that the pious Christian is “a
human hedgehog. He is covered from head to foot with the tiny, sharp spines of the
daily, barely conscious piccata minutissima […].” 2 So, original sin affects us all. Hence,
the Christian life is not that of continuous practiced virtue, but of sin and penance.

Augustine won the debate, and the Church teaches that to do good, humans
need the grace of God. They cannot do it on their own. As a matter of moral psychology,
this doctrine is a great reminder that humility is fitting for those who are relatively
virtuous or, as we would say, have their life together. 3 However, it does evoke some
inevitable questions. E.g., if we can only do good because God has given us the grace
to do good, and if we need to be good, act well, to go to heaven, does God not
predestine some of us for heaven and others not?

There is a part of Pelagianism that resonates with our human experience. When
we are actually really trying to do the right thing, it does seem to be a matter of insight
and commitment, reason and free will. We do not seem to experience a divine push in
the right direction. On the other hand, with Augustine, we also know how difficult it is to
do the right thing all the time. Even if we have the best of intentions.

The strong focus on the role of grace in the Christian life was made acute by the
Reformation. This concern played a role in Pope Leo XIII's push to make Thomism the
philosophy par excellence in his Encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879). Aquinas seems, as
Chesterton later lucidly argued, to capture the "catholic" common sense of our human
condition. 4 We are able to do some good by natural means, and we should. We should
strive for holiness and realize that we are sinful and need help.

The Pelagian debate seems to be predominantly about grace and morality. It
hints, however, at an ”existential” dimension of grace. Many people's lives are far from
well-ordered or successful, and often are an interrupted enterprise. Our lives are often
messy. However, God's grace, God, is there too. We discover Him in "[t]he unexpected
goodness, the friendships, the fact that someone needs us."5  As the young country
priest dying of stomach cancer says in George Bernanos Diary of a Country Priest,
"Grace is everywhere."6

______________________________________________________________________________________________
1 A very clear book about it is Stuart Squires, The Pelagian Controversy, An Introduction to the
Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of the Lost Souls, Pickwick, 2019
2 Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of
Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD, Princeton Press, 2012, p. 362
3 Compare Pope Francis, Gaudate et Exsultate, pp. 47-51,
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-
francesco_esortazione-ap_20180319_gaudete-et-exsultate.html
4 Chesterton’s Approach to Thomism, https://www.chesterton.org/approach-to-thomism/
5 Richard Steenvoorde OP, Review: A Case for the Existence of God,
https://dominicandispatches.substack.com/p/review-a-case-for-the-existence-
of?utm_source=post-email-
title&publication_id=894013&post_id=140418794&utm_campaign=email-post-
title&isFreemail=true&r=2circ&utm_medium=email
6 George Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest, Carol and Graf, 1983, p. 298

Image credit: DominicanFriars.org                                                           By Brother Vincent Ferrer

Many great figures throughout the Old and New Testaments endured great suffering. No one
suffered as much as Jesus Christ as He fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant
pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity, bore the punishments that make man whole, and
healed humanity by His wounds (Isaiah 53). Our Blessed Mother also suffered beyond human
comprehension with her seven sorrows. Christ and the Blessed Mother had a heightened
awareness and sensitivity to suffering, pain, and anguish that surpasses all humanity due to
their unblemished purity. Two figures in the New Testament that help us understand the
profound suffering of our Lord and explain the important role of human suffering in advancing in
holiness are the Apostles Peter and Paul. Peter left the Church with a profound message on
how we, as members of the Body of Christ, must embrace our sufferings to break from sin.
                Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with
                the same attitude for whoever suffers in the flesh has broken with sin)
                so as not to spend what remains of one’s life in the flesh on human
                desires, but on the will of God. For the time that has passed is sufficient
                for doing what the Gentiles like to do: living in debauchery, evil desires,
                drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and wanton idolatry. They are surprised
                that you do not plunge into the same swamp of profligacy, and they vilify
                you; but they will give an account to him who stands ready to judge the
                living and the dead (1 Peter 4:1-5).

The Apostle Paul understood that his sufferings were a way to be like Christ and an offering for
Christ’s sake. Paul says:
               Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of
               knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of
               all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and
               be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law,
               but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from
              God depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection,
              and may share his suffering, becoming like him in his death, that if possible
              I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:8-11)

Another dimension of Paul’s thought on the meaning of suffering is his conception of suffering
as a means for sanctification, keeping pride at a minimum and trust in God at a maximum.
              And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations,
              a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me,
              to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about
              this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you,
​              for my power is made perfect in weakness.’…For the sake of Christ, then, I
              am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and
              calamities; for when I am weak then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

Praying and meditating on the sacred writings of Peter and Paul has given me great hope,
fortitude, and enduring inspiration amid my long suffering. I began to embrace my heavy
crosses instead of running from them when I made the conscious decision during the Good
Friday Mass three years ago that I was going to put Paul’s words, “I have been crucified with
Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me…who loved me and gave himself up
for me” (Galatians 2:20) into action in my own life. We must accept our sufferings and trust
God’s divine providence by abandoning ourselves to His will.

First, we must ask for God’s grace to understand our suffering and embrace it for the sake of
our salvation. We must also contemplate prayerfully the events and circumstances causing our
suffering. Next, we can create our own litany by naming and writing down the sufferings that we
are experiencing, such as loneliness, despair, grief, or depression. Acknowledge these
sufferings before God and let Him know that you trust He is present through these trials. Also,
before God in prayer, formally name and accept these sufferings. Once you have accepted and
embraced these sufferings, offer them up by name to God as reparation. These offerings of
reparation might seem small in nature, but remember, the Blessed Mother and Jesus Christ can
multiply and magnify these gifts of reparation and use them to pour out an abundance of God’s
grace upon His people and the restoration of all things under Jesus Christ.

                                                                                           
​                          by Sr. Catherine Marie Michael






The Barcelona soccer (futbol) team is known for its successful use of an offense in which three
players create moving triangles up the field while getting open to receive short passes around
defenders. If one of the players tries to score on his own, without relying on the team, the
opposing team can take advantage of a possible weakness. So for this offense to work well,
unselfish play is required. On an infinitely grander scale, the Holy Trinity’s work is of one
accord, such that “the real distinction of the persons from one another resides solely in the
relationships which relate them to one another” (CCC 255).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes the Council of Florence stating that “everything
(in Them) is one where there is no opposition of relationship” (CCC 255). Hence. we can say,
since there is no opposition of relationship, no selfish, opposing forces or misunderstandings,
there is perfect unity in the divine nature or substance, so we confess one God in three Persons.
The relations between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit do not “divide the divine unity”
(CCC 255). This unity of divine Persons is God Who is love (1 John 4:16).

Further, the work of the consubstantial Trinity is “at once common and personal” (CCC 259). It
is one Symphony of Creation. In this Symphony we are asked to be united to the incarnate Son
through the Holy Spirit in His Church, so that each of us in our fallen, discordant human nature,
might through the graces of the Cross, become like Christ. In uniting our earthly suffering with
His suffering, like our Mother Mary and St. John who desired to be at the foot of the Cross, we
show our grateful love for Him Who defeated death for each one of us. In Him, we may be
partakers of the divine nature and enter into the eternal life of the Trinity (see CCC 519, 521,
679, 682, 260; 2 Peter 1:4). We will then “arrive at love” (CCC 25).

                                                                                         by Sr. Catherine Marie Michael

Ave Maria! Immaculate Mother of God,
You give us confidence that we are meant to be
touched by your Son’s light and grace,
made to be elevated by Love with hearts of flesh
God-bearers, brought forth as a new creation.

(see John 1:14; Ezekiel 36:26; John 14:23; 1Cor 6:19; Rom 8:19)

                                                                                                       by Brother Dismas Bartolo Baume

I had no momentous conversion event. There is no rock bottom, no near-death experience, no joyful
moment that yet, somehow, seemed lacking. Nothing so glamorous as all that. Nope. I just spent a lot of time in a windowless room, in near total darkness, collecting data for my dissertation. A computer did most of the heavy lifting on the data collection; I was there to set up the little plastic plates with
nematodes and switch them out under the microscope connected to the computer. The behavioral
analysis came later. Even then, nematodes (a fancy name for worms) only have so many behaviors to
analyze. It was often monotonous, but monotony creates ample time for thinking.

Most of these thoughts were related to my dissertation, of course, but a couple embarrassingly
pretentious topics unrelated to the dissertation always seemed to turn up for further rumination. The
first nagging topic concerned what I perceived to be a hole in Cell Theory. The second recurring topic,
because this first was inadequately pompous, was about the nature of infinity.

Cell Theory states all organisms consist of at least one cell, the cell is the fundamental organizational
unit of an organism, and that all cells are derived from pre-existing cells. It is this third statement
wherein we find the hole in Cell Theory: all cells are derived from pre-existing cells except the first cell.
There had to be, for lack of a better phrase, an “Adam cell” – a cell that was not derived from a cell that
already existed. To be clear, nothing about this statement disproves Cell Theory. Cell Theory is a fact,
but something pushed non-life into life. There are laboratories throughout the world doing amazing
research to explain the mechanism for the movement from non-life into life. It’s mesmerizing, to be
frank. It’s also such an incredible grace that God, who is reason, gives us enough capacity for reason that we can apply the scientific method to understand His creation more fully.

How does the nature of infinity fit into this conversion story? In the simplest terms, it amazed me when I realized infinity is not unidirectional. While the magnitude of what it means for something to never end can be challenging to grasp, most people can imagine it. Down the street from where I grew up, there was a gas station on the corner. Eventually, the gas station closed, and bakery went into that building. Over the ensuing decades, many businesses have come and gone from that site, yet I persist. I am not infinite, of course, but that is enough of a microcosm of infinity for me to grasp the idea of something never ending. The real challenge in understanding infinity is moving in the other direction: grasping the idea that something could exist without ever beginning. This is so incredibly challenging because there exists nothing in the observable universe for which this is true. Everything had a beginning – even the universe itself, at the Big Bang. So, if everything in the universe had a beginning, including the universe itself, whatever started all that mass and stardust spinning must exist outside the observable universe.

It was in trying to find the error in my reasoning about the nature of infinity that I discovered the Five
Ways of St Thomas Aquinas. I went to Catholic elementary and secondary schools. I had heard of
Aquinas but all I really knew about him was in a broad sense that he had been a big deal medieval
theologian who wrote a book to teach Dominican friars how to be preachers. I have since come to
develop a more nuanced appreciation of both St Thomas and his writings, but what are his Five Ways?

1. The Argument from First Mover
2. The Argument from Universal Causation
3. The Argument from Contingency
4. The Argument from Degree
5. The Argument from Final Cause or Ends

I have no training in philosophy or theology, so I’m grossly underequipped to defend or explain these
arguments. Scores of books, essays, and reflections will serve you better than I could. However, even my rudimentary understanding of them made it clear that the first three, the cosmological arguments,
address my insights regarding Cell Theory and the nature of infinity. If God is not a moved mover, a
caused cause, or a contingent contingency, then the hole in Cell Theory is resolved and the nature of
infinity becomes a gift of grace to allow us an insight into the ineffability of God. It demonstrates God
wants us to know Him, despite our utter lack of ability ever to do so fully.

From all of this, I came to understand that science is not at odds with religion. Faith and reason coexist
because God is reason, so believing in God necessitates believing science. The scientific method draws
conclusions from reproducible results based on hypothesis testing in the observable universe. Science is how we come to know and appreciate creation, the observable universe within space and time. God
exists outside the observable universe and, even more importantly, outside of time, where science has
no game. However, this is exactly where philosophy brings its best game; to explain how everything was created from nothing with a bang.

It was here, at the beginning of all things, where science and philosophy must come together, that I
became an inadvertent Thomist and found my way back to faith.