grace and effort?

from comment 48 here:  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/how-the-church-won-an-interview-with-jason-stellman/#comment-39984

“What hope do you have when the effectiveness of God’s saving grace is dependent on how much you extend effort and cooperate with that, meriting the righteousness needed, avoiding mortal sin, doing penance and atoning for temporatl guilt of your sins in purgatory so that finally you will be deserving of the beatific vision?”

You could have asked Paul a similar question when he told the Corinthians that God’s grace toward him was “not in vain” since he “labored more than anyone else.” In fact, I would venture to guess that every prominent NT figure—Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John—made at least one or two statements that could give rise to the very question you’re asking me. Jesus said that unless we hear his words and do them, our house is built on sand and will collapse on judgment day. “OK, but how much obedience, Jesus? And how perfect must that obedience be?” John said that God gives us what we ask “because we keep his commandments.” Well, couldn’t you just ask John, “But since it is impossible to obey the law perfectly, then why are you making answered prayer hinge on something we cannot do?”

I could go on and on. My point is that your paradigm makes no sense out of these passages and others. And it is ironic that the very objections you’re offering against the Catholic gospel could be made to statements found all over the NT, especially statements from Jesus. So until your problems with the Catholic message don’t also apply to the biblical one, you’ll have to forgive me for thinking they sound pretty hollow.

below from here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/07/st-augustine-on-law-and-grace/ :

Overview of the Reformed and Catholic positions on Law and Grace

Before turning to St. Augustine, consider briefly the Reformed and Catholic doctrines concerning the relation of law and grace. According to Reformed theology, justification is by an extra nos (i.e. outside of us) imputation of the obedience of Christ. In other words, God justifies us by counting us as righteous not because of any righteousness infused into us, but by crediting Christ’s righteousness to our account, and crediting Him with our sins. God counts Christ’s suffering and death as punishment for our sins, and God counts Christ’s perfect obedience as our obedience. By this double imputation, nothing we do can bring us into condemnation.¹ That is what it means, in Reformed theology, to be no longer under law, but under grace. The law remains normative and binding on believers as a guide to living correctly, but no one who has been justified by grace through faith can be condemned by the law, nor justified by law-keeping. Believers are not under the law for justification or condemnation; they are under grace. Grace and law are, in that respect, mutually exclusive.

According to Catholic doctrine, justification is by an infusion of sanctifying grace and agape. God does not count-us-as-righteous-even-though-internally-we-are-unrighteous; by infusing grace and agape into our hearts at the moment of regeneration He instantly makes us righteous. God does not count (or impute) our sins against us (Rom 4:8), not by leaving us with a wicked sinful heart and merely overlooking our sins, but by mercifully transforming our heart through the infusion of sanctifying grace and agape such that there is no mortal sin to overlook. The person with agape in his heart is in friendship with God, and thus is righteous before God. When Abraham chose to believe God’s promise (Rom 4:3), this act not only showed that Abraham had a faith working through agape and thus was in friendship with God, but it also deepened that friendship, and so God counted it to him as righteousness. Agape fulfills the law (Rom 10:8-10), because agape is the spirit of the law. Withoutagape, no one is righteous in His sight. But through Christ agape is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). By this agape in our hearts, we walk in newness of life; this infused grace and agape produces the “obedience of faith” of which St. Paul speaks (Rom 1:5, 16:26). This infused grace and agape is the gift of righteousness (Rom 5:17) by which we have been “freed from sin and made slaves of righteousness” (Rom 6:18,22). By this gift we are made “doers of the Law” (Rom 2:13), such that the requirement of the Law is “fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit,” (Rom 8:4). By this gift we subject ourselves to the law of God (Rom 8:7). By this gift of infused sanctifying grace and agape, our spirit is made alive (Rom 8:10) and the law is written on our hearts (cf. Rom 2:28-29), truly in our hearts (Rom 10:8, 10), as the prophet Jeremiah prophesied long ago concerning the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:33-34). So according to the Catholic doctrine regarding law and grace, by the infusion of sanctifying grace we receive the gift of agape by which we truly fulfill the law. Here, grace and law are not mutually exclusive; grace orients us to God in divine love such that we fulfill the law, and are truly justified in our hearts.