Transformed By Grace for Full Stature

By Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.

Do you know when the anniversary of your baptism is? If you don’t, I recommend that you contact the parish where you were baptized (or the parish where you were received into full communion, if baptized outside the Catholic Church). Ask for that date and celebrate it. On January 12, 1997, Saint John Paul II baptized 19 babies and afterwards proclaimed, “We should celebrate the day of our baptism as we do our birthday! But how many of the baptized are fully aware of what they have received?” What do we receive at baptism? God gives us principally two great gifts.

We receive the gift of an indelible mark called a character upon the soul. The baptismal character is necessary for the valid reception of other sacraments, which may have further requirements for validity. For example, a baptized man and a baptized woman, without impediments to marriage, may receive the sacrament of marriage together. Also, a baptized man may receive sacred ordination, which, along with confirmation, imposes a character that deputes the soul to worship God. Three of the seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, and holy orders) confer a sacramental character. We cannot lose a sacramental character—whether we are in heaven or in hell, we are forever marked at the core of our being for the purpose of worshiping God.

We also receive at baptism the precious gift of sanctifying grace. Baptismal grace removes original sin and any personal sins, and it gives us participation in the divine life. Grace deifies us, making us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). This gift is astounding. Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, “The good of grace in one is greater than the good of nature in the whole universe.” In this grace, we enjoy the Blessed Trinity dwelling within our souls. By the infusion of grace, with its many virtues (especially faith, hope, and charity), gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, and the Beatitudes, we become transformed as God’s beloved children, adopted in the Spirit to be conformed to the Son Who is the Way to the Father. Grace is the seed of glory, for no one goes to see God in heaven’s glory except by having the grace of Christ at work in the soul at the point of death. Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who spoke of her littleness, ran in grace like a giant to heaven!

But grace, unlike a sacramental character, can be lost during this life on earth. The Sacrament of Reconciliation, or confession, restores grace to the soul with the forgiveness of mortal sins, and it also forgives venial sins, which hinder our growth in grace. St. Thomas Aquinas, who extols the awe-inspiring importance of a soul in grace, teaches that we do not customarily have absolute certainty about whether we have grace. The Church’s Code of Canon Law says: “A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.” Notice that it does not say “A person who is conscious of being in a state of grace may receive Communion…” We do not need to “feel” grace at work. Before she was put to death, St. Joan of Arc was asked if she was in the state of grace. She superbly 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.” While her accusers thought otherwise, grace perfected St. Joan.

God wants us all to be perfected by grace in the communion of the Church. Saint Paul says, “Grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Ephesians 4:7). This grace comes to transform us to grow, so often in hidden ways, to “the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). That all begins with baptism. Celebrate it!

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Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., entered the Order of Preachers in 1995 and was ordained to the priesthood in 2002. He is a Professor of Patristics at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Thomist, a quarterly academic journal that seeks to cultivate a fruitful dialogue between modern and contemporary philosophical systems and the classical tradition of philosophy and Christian theology.

Photo: The Last Supper, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1449-1494, Museo di San Marco, Florence, Italy