February 24, 2026

Grace and Sacrifice

My life long examination into the Nature of Grace got another contribution this past couple of weeks. I have been studying the sermons of Meister Eckhart as you can see below in the thread of this blog. When I changed the website from a one-way communications hub to a list of my interests, I set up a bunch of pages one of which was "Grace". I have been interested in the subject for 46 years and my recent interest in Eckhart has opened up a whole new perspective. William F. Buckley planted the simple question. Now I find the answer far more difficult. Eckhart is difficult. But, I think I am getting it. Here below are my initial thoughts on Grace informed by Eckhart, with a long foundation from Aquinas. Additionally, I seem to consumed by a great need to pour my life into needy souls. Sacrifice. So you may detect a perversion of Eckhart from me since I am in rebellion with his presupposition that forgiveness is unnecessary in view of his drive towards detachment as a means to holiness. You can find these thoughts on the webpage GRACE. This blog post is considated on that page. Please criticize me.

Link to Page about Grace

What is the Nature of Grace?

I have spent decades turning this question over in my mind, and the more I read Aquinas and now Eckhart, the more I realize the question itself is part of the Grace. I am better simply because of attending to the subject. It never quite settles. It keeps returning, like a hand that won't let go during the kiss of peace, like a name spoken once that echoes for forty years. Aquinas gives us structure; Eckhart gives us fire. Neither feels complete on its own, but together they point toward something I can only call the act of Grace itself.

NOTE: The bolded terms are usages from Aquinas and Eckhart

Saint Thomas Aquinas approaches Grace with the care of a master builder. He insists Grace is created, a supernatural quality, a "habit" that God infuses into the soul the way dye changes cloth without becoming the cloth. Sanctifying grace is the permanent change that makes the soul pleasing to God and lifts human nature into participation in divine life. Actual grace is more fleeting; it prompts specific acts of will or intellect (prayer, forgiveness, the decision to rise when everything says stay down). Then he draws further distinctions: operating grace is God moving first, without any initiative from us; cooperating grace is the moment we join that movement, our will folding into His. Prevenient grace comes before we even desire the good, preparing the soil; subsequent grace follows and sustains the good once it has begun. And through it all he is scrupulous about one thing: Grace remains distinct from God. Creator and creature stay separate. He is protecting something essential, the real difference between God and us, so we do not slip into thinking we are divine.

That careful architecture is admirable, even comforting. Yet it can feel mechanical. Grace begins to look like a tool God employs rather than the action of the touch of His own hand. The many categories (sanctifying, actual, operating, cooperating, prevenient, subsequent) cover every angle, but in doing so they risk turning love into a formula, a system we can diagram instead of a presence we can only experiamce.

Meister Eckhart takes the opposite road, and it is both exhilarating and unnerving. For him Grace is not created at all; it is God, the very ground of being. There is no habit to be added, no layer to be laid on top of the soul. When Grace arrives, the soul does not receive something from God; it merges into the divine essence. All separation (ego, sin, the noisy world) dissolves in His presence. Grace is oneness, not something given but something realized: the soul becomes what God is. The risk is obvious. The Church has always called this edge-heresy because it blurs the line between Creator and creature so completely that the human person seems to vanish. Eckhart suffered excommunication for a while. Yet when you read Eckhart, you feel the pull of something true. The language loops back on itself (Grace is God, God is Grace), and the repetition is almost painful, like staring into a mirror that reflects only moving light. It is overwhelming. And that overwhelming quality feels closer to the moments I have known than any category ever could teach.

So where does that leave us? Somewhere between Aquinas's careful distance and Eckhart's wild oneness. Grace is God acting, willing the good, then making it real, without turning into a separate substance or erasing the one who receives it. It is not a created habit, not a gift handed over, but the very motion of divine love reaching into time and flesh. It touches soul, mind, and body together, remaking without replacing, clarifying without overwhelming. And it is never separate from God: it is His motion, His love, His presence moving through us.

To clarify, the Holy Spirit is the breath and fire of that motion, the Third Person of the Trinity, the personal love between Father and Son. He has will, He speaks, He intercedes with groans too deep for words. He is not an impersonal force; He chooses to love me. When He acts, Grace happens.

The soul is created, immortal, rational, the image of God that animates the body, giving it life, motion, heartbeat. It receives God's act and is remade, never replaced. It knows, it loves, it chooses.

The mind is simply the knowing faculty of the soul, how it sees truth, judges, remembers. Grace does not give it a new intelligence; it brings clarity, the sudden sense that what was hidden is now plain.

And Grace itself, our landing after all the reading and wrestling, is God, willing good and then doing it. The reach. The eternal touch. The burning lips of Isaiah. My burning tongue. It strikes soul, mind, and body at once. It never stands apart from God; it is His motion, His love, His presence breaking into our ordinary hours.

That is as close as I can come for now. The categories help, but they are just scaffolding. The reality is that hand that forever held mine in church forty years ago in Saint Mary's Bascilica, the coal that touched Isaiah's lips, the special name spoken in my home, the lingering smell of my mother's perfume. Grace is not a definition we recite. It is the verb by which we are mastered by love.

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