The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 263: Responding to Grace (2026)

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

God’s free initiative demands man’s free response. We continue our discussion of grace today by examining how grace and our free will interact in our lives. Fr. Mike also explains the purpose of sacramental graces and how the expression of these graces looks different across the Body of Christ. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2002-2005. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is a 263. We're writing paragraphs 2002 to 2005. I know it's only a couple, but they're amazing. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the catechism of the Catholic Church.

You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash CIY. And you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates. Daily notifications today is day 263, reading paragraphs. As I said, 2002, 2005. Yesterday we started talking about grace, sanctifying grace, that stable, habitual grace, as well as actual graces. We talked about prevenient grace, the grace that moves us to say yes to the Lord. And yet, that prevening grace, that prevailing grace,

does not take away human freedom. In fact, God's free initiative demands our free response. And it's so important because all of this is wrapped up from freedom. One of the big questions that can come out is, okay, wait, is it grace or is it free will? And the church says, yes. It's the Catholic both and. It's the paradoxical mystery where, oh, we could not do this without grace. And at the same time, we also need to be free when we're doing this. We need both. Someone could say, well yeah but does grace override our free will? No grace gives our free will the ability to be truly free. And that's so important for us to understand. Grace gives us the ability to be truly free to actually say yes to what we're made for because sin are, you know, remember the big fancy word concupiscence,

that attraction to sin, that being drawn to sin, that that gets in the way. We'll say it like that. It gets in the way. And we're not able to say yes to God without his grace. So we're talking more about that today. As well as I mentioned this at the end of the episode, so yesterday, sacramental graces. So there are sacramental graces which are proper to eat the different sacraments. And there are also special graces called charisms, which is, again, that's a Greek term meaning favor, gratuitous gift, benefit, whatever they are. They're like miracles, the gift of tongues. They're all oriented towards sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the church. So they're meant to build up the body. So if you ever have the gift of tongues, you have the gift of

healing, the gift of any kind of those special charisms, those aren't for us. become holier in? I mean, yes, if we're saying yes to God, of course we're becoming holy, but they're given so that the church may be built up, the body of Christ may be built up, and that other people can know of God's goodness, they can know of his love for them, and they too can actually participate in divine life. That is the incredible gift. There are also graces of state, which, what does that mean? Well, they're the graces that accompany the exercise of responsibility in Christian life and ministries within the church. And so we're talking about those today. Before that, though, let us take a moment and say a prayer. Father in heaven, we give you glory.

We praise you. We love you. You are love. Father, son, and Holy Spirit. Holy Trinity. One God. Undivided unity. And yet the God who is love. Father, son, and Holy Spirit. I thank you so much. I thank you for sharing your love with us. I thank you so much for sharing. Yourself, Father, I thank you for sharing your only beloved son and giving him to us. Thank you, Father, for giving us your Holy Spirit, this bond of love between you and the Son, so that we can also participate in your divine life, so that we also can participate in your loves, that what Jesus has done for us can actually be manifested in our lives. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, I thank you so much.

we all thank you so much. Help us to live like you. Help us to love like you. Help your love not to end with us, but to go through us, work through us, and reach the people around us. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It is day 263. We're reading paragraphs 2002 to 2005. God's free initiative demands man's free response. for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of eternal life respond beyond all hope to this desire.

As St. Augustine said, if at the end of your very good works you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed very good, since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the Sabbath of eternal life. Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the body of Christ, church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are, furthermore,

special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning favor, gratuitous gift, benefit. Whatever their character, sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gifts of miracles or of tongues, charisms are oriented towards sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the church. Among the special graces ought to be mentioned the graces of state that accompany the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and of the ministries within the church. As St. Paul wrote to the Romans, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, he who teaches in his teaching, he who exhorts in his

exhortation, he who contributes in liberality, he who gives aid with zeal, he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved.

However, according to the Lord's words, thus you will know them by their fruits. Reflection on God's blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.

A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges. Asked if she knew that she was in God's grace, she replied, if I am not, may it please God to put me in it. If I am, may it please God to keep me there. All right, there we have it, paragraphs 2002 to 2005. It was very short, but man, there is so much in there. We talked about at the very, very beginning, how God's free initiative demands man's free response. Again, God has created us along with freedom, the power of the ability. He made us to know him to love him. That's why we're made. And remember, to say yes to love, we need to be free.

We cannot love unless we're free. We cannot say yes and have that really be a free yes without the power to be able to say no. And so here's how God made you. He made you with a longing for truth and a longing for goodness that only he can satisfy. One of the most famous quotes from St. Augustine was he talked about how he searched for the Lord in so many areas, but only God can satisfy. Here's the quote. It's from his book called Confessions. He says, late have I loved you? Talking to God. Late have I loved you? Beauty so old and so new. Late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there. And in my unlovely state, I plunged into those lovely, created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not

with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called, and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent. You put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath, and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace, which is yours. Remember, God made us for this goodness, for this beauty that we cannot attain on our own. And also, no created thing will satisfy. Again, here's Augustine talking about this.

He says, I plunge into those lovely and created things which you made. That's what I wanted. I have this appetite, right? We all of us have the goodness, the beauty, the more that we're made for. And so Augustine, he said, in my unlovely state, I plunge into those lovely creatures. created things. And he says those lovely things kept me far from you, although if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. Right? So once again, the paradox is it keeping me from God is bringing me closer to God. We recognize that all God's created things. We can treat them as

gods in our lives, idols in our lives, and they can keep us from God, but also all created things. All that God has made is good. And so as St. Augustine is saying, all of those things, they would not exist had not they had their existence in God so they're also good right so it's it's about treating things appropriately it's about using things wisely so here we are going back to paragraph 2002 it says this very so clearly that the soul only enters freely into the communion of love and god immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man he draws us to himself and he uses you created things obviously like St. Augustine points out, but he wants us to get to him, this promise of eternal life, this new life. Paragraph 2003 talks about that grace is first and foremost the gift of the

spirit. Remember, all that Jesus has done for us, all that Jesus made the Son of God, made actual, the Holy Spirit makes possible. So this is grace is the gift of the Holy Spirit who justifies us, right? He makes us right with the Lord and sanctifies us, makes us holy like the Lord. But there's, you know, we talked about yesterday, habitual grace, there's actual graces, There's prevenient graces. And then we also talk today about sacramental graces. So those are gifts proper to the different sacraments. So kind of a really obvious example is what's one of the graces of the sacrament of reconciliation?

Well, reconciliation, right? One of the graces of confession is forgiveness. And so we just recognize that there are sacramental graces that are proper to the sacraments. There's others as well, but just as an example. And there's also these graces called charisms, these special graces. Again, St. Paul talks about them as favor, gratuitousal. gift, benefit, and even paragraph 2003 highlights that they can be extraordinary. They can be the gift of miracles or the gift of speaking in tongues, praying in tongues, interpreting tongues. They can also

be the gift of mighty works. They can be the gifts of even faith. There are times that the charisms that are given to us, they're given to us in a very subtle way. In fact, there's this beautiful, beautiful way that one of the ancient church fathers has described how those chasms, those graces, come down like dew on a meadow. That those graces ultimately are just so gentle like this, right? This is God's work. Sometimes again, it says here, 2003, extraordinary, these charisms. And other times they are almost unnoticeable. And that's, it's really, really remarkable because paragraph 2005 talks about this. It says, since it belongs to the supernatural order, remember, it's not on the natural order. This is on the supernatural order. So natural order means you can, you can feel it, see it, taste it, touch it,

smell it, that kind of thing. This is grace belongs to the supernatural order. Therefore, grace escapes our experience. We can't feel it. We can't taste it. We can't sense it. It can be known only by faith. Now, the catechism is highlighting this because it says we cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved. This is from the council of Trent. I can't say, well, I feel saved or I can't say I feel condemned. I can't. I can't rely on my works to conclude that I'm justified and saved. I can't say, well, no, I've been praying this much, therefore I'm justified, therefore I'm saved. We can't do that. Because remember, grace belongs to the supernatural order, so it escapes our experience. It is only known by faith.

Now at the same time, yes, we can't feel it, smell it, touch it, see it, all those kind of things. However, Jesus did say that you'll know them by their fruits. And so we can reflect on God's blessings in our lives in the lives of the saints that we can look and say, okay, wait, let me see the fruits of grace. And this is what all of us, we need to be doing this when it comes to making a consciousness examiner or examination of conscience regularly. I don't want to say just every single day. Sometimes I say every single day and then people, you know, kind of like pressing play on the catechism in the ear, it's like, well, if I miss a day, then I'm going to stop. Just on a regular basis to stop and reflect on God's blessings in our lives. And then the lives of the saints that can

offer us a guarantee in some ways that grace is at work enough. us. That this is just so important. Jesus made it very, very clear that you'll know them by their fruits. This reflection is necessary for us. Now, that's not us working to heaven. That's not working for our salvation. It's not that at all. But as a sign that we're walking with Christ, there should be some fruit there. Now, a big disclaimer. Sometimes the fruit is not what you and I want in our lives. Sometimes the fruit is, well, I thought I'd have more peace. Well, maybe you have more peace, but maybe you're not a very good judge how much peace you have, right? I think, well, you know, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is joy, so I should be more joyful.

But we recognize that all of us have different temperaments, right? We all have different personalities. And so your level of increased joy, supernatural joy, might not look like how you thought it would look or how you think it should look. It also might not look how it looks on someone else. Again, we have not only different temperaments, different personalities, we have different limitations, that we come to the Lord also with physical illnesses. We come to the Lord with mental illnesses, emotional damage in our own hearts and minds. And so we recognize that the fruit of those things like joy and peace, they can be there and yet you can still be sick. It's not

sense that you might have supernatural peace and supernatural joy and still suffer from anxiety and depression. You might have supernatural peace and supernatural joy, right? Those fruits of the spirit and still not be like doing backflips every single day. Why? Because it's not like grace looks the same on everyone. In fact, grace looks different on everyone. It's almost a situation like where sin looks the same on everyone. But grace looks different.

The way in which you can manifest, you know, say they bear fruit, bear witness to God's mercy, will look different than your neighbor. The way you experience God's peace will probably be experienced in you different than your neighbor. The way you experience joy, the supernatural gift of joy, probably look differently than it does on someone else. Now, there's people who are just kind of like tiggers, right, from Winnie the Pooh, they're bouncing all over the place. They seem like they're like, wow, they've got the spirit. Yes, they do. And there's people who are like Eeyore.

And just that's their natural disposition. You think like, wait, that's not the spirit. That person's always morose and somber. Well, no, they might, in their personality, still have those fruits of the spirit. That's a long way to try to explain paragraph 2005 that says graces escape our experience. We can only know them through faith. We can't rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we're justified or saved. But I love this quote from St. Joan of Arc, right? She was on trial by the ecclesiastical authorities and they were trying to trap her, trying to catch her. Asked if she knew if she was in God's grace because, oh, if she knows she's in God's grace, then she's violating because the teaching is we don't, we can't know necessarily for sure. Her answer.

So are you saved or not? Well, even God's grace or not. If I am not, may it please God to put me in it. And if I am, may it please God to keep me there. That kind of trust is so necessary for every one of us. The kind of trust that says, God knows, God knows my weaknesses. God knows whether I'm walking in grace right now or I'm outside of his grace. And so if I'm outside of his grace, he's so good. I asked him to please, may he put me in it. And if I'm in his grace, may he keep me in it. A little bit longer today, I apologize for all these explanations. Boy howdy. But it's so incredible.

Grace is, to be corny, amazing. It really, really is. Here's God's supernatural life that dwells inside of you right now. And in that power, in that power of that supernatural life, and that power of that sanctifying habitual, actual grace, all the graces, I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike.

I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.