Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 340.

YOUCAT Question n. 340 - How is God’s grace related to our freedom?

(Youcat answer) God’s grace is freely bestowed on a person, and it seeks and summons him to respond in complete freedom. Grace does not compel. God’s love wants our free assent.

  A deepening through CCC

(CCC 2001) The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it" (St. Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17: PL 44, 901): Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing (St. Augustine, De natura et gratia, 31: PL 44, 264).    

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) One can also say No to the offer of grace. Grace, nevertheless, is not something external or foreign to man; it is what he actually yearns for in his deepest freedom. In moving us by his grace, God anticipates man’s free  response. 

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 2002) 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: 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 (St. Augustine, Conf. 13, 36, 51: PL 32, 868; cf. Gen 1:31). (CCC 2022) The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate with it, and perfects freedom.   

(The next question is: Can someone earn heaven by good works?)