On Predestination and Free Will
The following sermon was proclaimed by the Most Reverend Monsignor Sebastian, Priestly Society of Christ the King, SSCR:
God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. – Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 15:14
MAN’S gift of Free Will is something that is often not explicated well; when properly understood the ridiculous and heretical question of If there is a God why does He allow evil is completely removed from thought and consideration. Grace, indeed free and available to all, must be willingly accepted and cooperated with. Free will, when properly ordered, requires Responsibility, Merit, Duty, Remorse and Justice, without all these components our free will may be misused or disordered. The self-aware soul constantly strives for perfection in all things, remembering the command of Our Beloved Saviour: Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect (S. Matthew 5:48). Perfection allows us to live in the grace of God and the life He created for us, and this is best achieved by careful administration and training of our will in conformity to God’s will, as the Apostle reminds us, This is the will of God, your sanctification (I Thessalonians 4:3).
Our human will is a governing faculty, so that it may rule over our passions and keep us in God’s grace, as we are reminded, in order to command nature we must first lean to obey it. It is in conformity to God’s will that we are truly free and truly happy because we can lead our other faculties to be performed correctly, and therefore more productively and more industriously; all human action must be towards the glory of God. By building up the proper use of the human will, which is a most difficult task and virtue to require, the reward is a whole and holy person. The gained grace and ability to govern oneself and submit to God are two perfect functions of the well-ordered human will. But again, only with much difficulty and fortitude, and renewed efforts (usually by means of frequent Confessions, fastings and such) can the will grow strong and resilient against the temptations that a weak will cannot stand against. Prayer, especially meditation, coupled with self-reflection and selfsacrifice is the cornerstone of a strong and well-ordered will. As the Angelic Doctor reminds us: The will of God is good in as much as to him who is rightly ordered it is a pleasure to do what God will us to do.
S. Thomas, the Angelic Doctor, teaches that, Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. In order to make this evident, we must observe that some things act without judgment; as a stone moves downwards; and in like manner all things which lack knowledge. And some act from judgment, but not a free judgment; as brute animals. For the sheep, seeing the wolf, judges it a thing to be shunned, from a natural and not a free judgment, because it judges, not from reason, but from natural instinct. And the same thing is to be said of any judgment of brute animals. But manacts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will (Summa Part I, Q83).
Free Will was denied by the arch-heresiarchs Luther and Calvin; their version of pre-destination is not only from God’s all-knowing nature, but concludes that ultimately God creates certain men for damnation, which is both blasphemous and heretical because it denies that God is pure good and assumes He wishes evil. S. Augustine teaches on this further: some men are predestined to exercise their will to accept the offer of grace and others are predestined to reject it. God, being omniscient, foresees, but does not determine who will accept His grace and who will not.
Did not our Gospel this morning teach us that God sows Good Seed, that is, His grace in us- how we receive His grace is where it falls – are we good soil or rocky ground? Do our hearts and souls grow tall in the nourishment of His grace, or do they wither away, or are they choked by the cares of this wicked and temporary world? This is a powerful parable for us to learn; God desires all men to be restored to His friendship and grace, God desires all men to love Him, not for His benefit, since He needs nothing, but for our own. He does not need our love, we need His.
When we align our will with God’s will for us we follow our true, proper and well-ordered nature. A perfect example of this is Our Lord’s agony in the garden of the Mount of Olives where He prayed: Father, if Thou wilt, remove this chalice from Me: but yet not My will, but Thine be done (St. Luke 22:42).
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We love you. Save souls. Amen.
