Saints LightGrace, Virtue and Sin
How God's grace actually works in a human life, how virtues are built and sins are overcome, and what the Church really teaches about faith, works, conscience and holiness.
The lessons
- What Is Grace?
Grace is God's free gift of His own life and help. Sanctifying grace makes us His children and lives in the soul; actual grace is His help in each moment to do good.
- Faith and Works: What Does the Church Really Teach?
We are saved by God's grace, which we cannot earn, received through a faith that comes alive in love. Catholics and Lutherans signed a 1999 declaration agreeing on these basic truths, while honest differences remain.
- Faith, Hope and Charity
Faith, hope and charity are God's gifts that connect us directly to Him: we believe Him, we trust His promises, and we love Him and others for His sake. They grow as we use them.
- The Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance
Prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance are the four hinge virtues of a good human life. We build them by practice, and God's grace heals and strengthens them.
- Conscience: Forming It and Following It
Conscience is God's voice within, and we must follow it, but we must also form it carefully through Scripture, prayer and Church teaching, because a conscience can be mistaken.
- What Is Sin? Mortal and Venial
Sin is a failure of love. A sin is mortal only when it is seriously wrong, we know it, and we freely choose it; otherwise it is venial. God's mercy in Confession is always ready for both.
- The Seven Capital Sins and Their Remedies
Seven root vices, pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth, feed most of our sins. Find your main one and fight it with its opposite virtue in small daily acts.
- The Works of Mercy
The fourteen works of mercy, seven for the body and seven for the soul, are how God's mercy to us flows out to others. Christ counts what we do for the least as done to Him.
- The Precepts of the Church
The five precepts of the Church are the basic minimum for every Catholic: Sunday Mass, yearly Confession, Easter Communion, keeping fast and abstinence days, and supporting the Church.
- Holiness for Ordinary People
Every Christian, not just priests and religious, is called to be holy, which means growing in love through union with Christ. For most of us that happens in ordinary life, offered to God.
Read Grace and Virtue in full
All 10 lessons of this course are in the Saints Light app, with Scripture, three questions each and your progress kept on your phone.
Every course is open free for your first 14 days. After that, one payment of $14.99 unlocks every course. There is no subscription.