How can you tell something is alive? The short answer is that you can see it moves on its own—that is, from something in itself. It is not being dropped or thrown or pushed but actually moves from its own resources. A flower that grows and blooms, a cocoon that becomes a monarch butterfly, a young couple kissing, a baby demanding attention—these are all obviously alive. If something doesn’t move on its own, even a little bit, then we assume that it does not have life.
How can you tell what a thing is? Well, in our human experience we know what a thing is by what it does. Fish swim, birds fly, flies buzz, snails creep, water refreshes, breeze cools, fire warms. All of these things indicate the nature of the thing that does them, even if we can never see directly what makes them what they are.
Of course, we understand that the kind of movement a thing has tells us what its nature is.
We know that we have a nature as human beings, and we know that this nature is a life, a movement from within that is based on that human nature. We are both alive and possess a particular nature, distinct from all the creatures around us.
Of all the activities that show we are alive, the ones that show we are human are the ones most specific to us: the ones based on our human powers of knowledge and free will. All human beings possess these powers, at least potentially. To know and to love: these are the powers of the rational animal.
God is the source and origin of this knowing and loving nature that we possess, just as he is of all the things that exist. We are told in Sacred Scripture that this knowing and loving nature is made in his image—that is, it reflects in a way which is more profound than other visible creatures the nature of the One who made us.
What the same sacred writings reveal to us also is that in a wonderful way God intended from the beginning to give us even more than just our human powers of knowing and loving. If we were left to ourselves, these powers would have been limited just to our experience of the other beings God had made, and they would have given us the knowledge of God, that he exists and that he made us and that we should live according to the rational nature he gave us. That would have been a great deal, a great gift for us.
But God was determined to give us even more, infinitely more. In fact, he created us, unlike any other visible creature (the angels, who are invisible, are another case), from our beginning with a nature that is called to more than that of which we are capable on our own power. In short, he gave us grace.
Grace is a free gift whereby our knowledge and love, flowing from our soul filled with grace within its depths, would be able to share directly not just in our own nature but also in the nature of God himself. He determined to make us, as the apostle tells us, “sharers in the diving nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). Not only images of God, but beings who share in ourselves the power to know as God knows and to love as God loves. And to this end he created all the things we would need in order to enjoy so wonderful a fate.
Sad to say, though, the first parents of our nature lost God’s gift of grace by their deliberate disobedience to him and so suffered loss and the fear of condemnation. It was Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified for us, and risen from the dead who was promised as the one who would lift up and restore our fallen nature so that we could live and persevere until death in the life of divine grace.
For this he revealed the mystery of the Godhead, the most Blessed Trinity; established his holy sacraments, which constitute the life of his Church; and continually bestows particular helps that are the life of grace for us. In short, he makes us his sons and daughters, more truly sharers in his nature than we are of our natural parents’ nature.
Thus, we are destined for the direct knowledge of God in the face-to-face vision of heaven, and to a love of God who even now unites us to him with the same bond which unites the divine Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the life of grace. It exceeds our own individual powers, and so must be simply given as a gift. That is why it is called grace.
Even so, we can strive to maintain this supernatural life of grace simply by using the gifts of grace that God has given us: the holy sacraments, the practice of prayer, the works of mercy and penance, all the things that make up our Christian life here below.
Nothing is more precious than the life of grace. May the Savior in his mercy keep us his grace now and at the hour of our death and forevermore!