Lesson 7 –
Can a Sacrament Cause Grace?

The seven sacraments are ordered to the holiness of the human person. The sacraments confer grace—they make us holy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that “grace is a participation in the life of God” (no. 1997). Because grace is a participation in God’s own divine life, God is the ultimate cause of grace. Only God can share his divine life with us.

The Catechism also teaches that the sacraments confer grace on the human person (nos. 1127, 1983). How do we reconcile these two teachings of the Catholic Church?

Course Reading

Summa Theologiae III q. 62, a. 1 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae III q. 62, a. 5 | St. Thomas Aquinas

A Companion to the Summa, pp. 258-260 | Walter Farrell, O.P.

Excerpt from Summa Theologiae III q. 62, a. 1:

We must… say… that an efficient cause is twofold, principal and instrumental. The principal cause works by the power of its form, to which form the effect is likened; just as fire by its own heat makes something hot. In this way none but God can cause grace: since grace is nothing else than a participated likeness of the Divine Nature, according to 2 Pt. 1:4: "He hath given us most great and precious promises; that we may be [Vulg.: 'you may be made'] partakers of the Divine Nature." But the instrumental cause works not by the power of its form, but only by the motion whereby it is moved by the principal agent: so that the effect is not likened to the instrument but to the principal agent: for instance, the couch is not like the axe, but like the art which is in the craftsman's mind. And it is thus that the sacraments of the New Law cause grace: for they are instituted by God to be employed for the purpose of conferring grace.

Course Listening

The Resurrection of Christ and the Deification of Man in the Liturgy | Prof. Daria Spezzano

Causality According to the Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective | Michael Gorman