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These are moments in which, thanks to a gift of God, our range of direct power is suddenly extended, so that the effectiveness of our free decision may advance into the depths of our being. In such cases, the concrete object to which our act refers has the function, as it were, of a pars pro toto, an exemplar representing a whole sphere of objects.

Thus, in the act of detaching ourselves from that object we change our attitude towards a vast province or the entire domain of created goods. In the act of bursting our bonds in this one case, we lift in principle a general state of bondage to which we were hitherto subjected. Such was the victory St. Francis achieved when he embraced the leper and kissed his sores. He then not only broke the specific shackle imposed on his love by his natural repugnance to ugly and disgusting things but made an essential breach with his dependence on his natural dispositions as such. In cases like this, the outward deed means at the same time an effective interior act, by which a new situation is created in the soul itself. This is most explicitly the case, it need hardly be emphasized, in regard to an act of conversion.

It is not, as has been observed above, in our power to conjure up such situations. These moments, when the operativeness of our freedom is increased and the range of our power expanded to a degree far beyond normal, bear an unmistakable character of gratuitous gifts. Whereas ordinarily we can only posit such free actions as may be supposed to exercise an indirect effect in favor of our transformation, in these supreme moments we may make a decisive step forward concerning our permanent state of soul. It is to these moments that St, Paul refers when he says: “Behold, now is the acceptable time . . . now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). Nor must we allow these decisive moments to pass unused: “Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Ps. 94:8).

Receptivity to grace in the sacraments transforms us

Yet, the ultimate and all-important source of our transformation in Christ lies not in what we do or what we can do by our free will, but in what God accords to us in the Sacraments: above all, our participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the reception of Holy Communion. The Lord Himself alone, who has redeemed and regenerated us by His most holy Blood, can receive us and transform us in His nature. Indeed, He cries to us: “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37), What we can contribute is that we do thirst—and drink. It is reserved for our freedom to receive the grace of God, the supernatural life He bestows upon us, and to open wide the gates of our souls so that the divine Life may penetrate us. This communication of grace is not given us in a way extraneous to our freedom of overriding it, but in that we go to Christ, and drink. Nevertheless, what we receive far surpasses everything we may intend or desire, indeed anything accessible to our power of experience. In the full objective sense of the term, we thus receive a new life which is to transform our very being—we may well say our ontological nature.

We should pray that we be transformed

Finally, it is certainly also within our power to pray for our transformation in Christ; to continue imploring God that He shall grant us the grace of that transformation and bless our own contribution to it. Mindful of the words of the Lord, “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), and again, “Ask, and you shall receive” (John 16:24), we must pray with the holy Church: “O God of virtues, to whom belongeth every excellent thing, implant in our hearts the love of Thy name, and bestow upon us the increase of religion, fostering what things are good, and, by Thy loving care, guarding what Thou hast fostered” (Collect of the sixth Sunday after Pentecost).

Transformation calls us freely to cooperate with God’s action in our soul

Such, then, are the manifold ways in which man is called to cooperate by his striving for perfection in