perseverance

from comment 87  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/09/nature-grace-and-mans-supernatural-end-feingold-kline-and-clark/#comment-51696

Grace upon grace” is necessary for perseverance in sanctifying grace because the gift of sanctifying grace is not identical to the gift of perseverance. Otherwise dying in mortal sin after justification would be impossible. The gift of perseverance is thus an additional grace beyond sanctifying grace, and we should pray daily for this gift. The gift of perseverance is an additional grace because it does not belong to us by nature (i.e. by our human nature) to persevere in grace. For this reason our perseverance in grace is itself a gift of grace, beyond what we can effect by our own natural powers. By “grace upon grace” I simply mean receiving an additional grace beyond the sanctifying grace already received.

the end of the newsletter discusses perseverance  http://chnetwork.org/newsletters/aug13.pdf

see also the other link on side of this blog

from here http://catholicforum.forumotion.com/t914-god-s-permission-of-sin-negative-or-conditioned-decree

The question is then naturally raised whether or not there is a law that applies to their glorification. The gift of glory and the gift of final perseverance infallibly connected to it are not a part of God’s general providence, by which salvation is once again made possible for fallen man, but are a part of His special providence, by which salvation is made actual and eternal. If these gifts cannot be merited by any of the graces that flow from God’s general providence, it still remains to ask whether or not they can be and are given according to a certain order. Marin argues in the affirmative:

The supreme and supernaturally free gift of final perseverance has, by the most free and merciful will of God, something of an order, and order that can be reduced to a sole law, and that is called the law of impetration. This law consists in this that, although the final perseverance is not causable, nor meritable by man (because it depends uniquely and exclusively upon the pure will of God, who gives it to whom He wants and as He wants, giving it sometimes to the greatest sinners and denying it to others who sin much less, for which Saint Augustine sasy with reason: “quare hune trahat et illum non trahat, noli velle judicare, si non vise rare”), it is nonetheless humbly impetrable or is obtainable from God by the sole way of prayer; but in a way of prayer founded not on the merits of the nature that prays, as perfect as one supposes this nature, nor either in the merits of the grace possessed by the one who prays, as great as one may suppose this grace and these merits, but based exclusively upon the blood and merits of our lord Jesus Christ, that is, in the pure mercy of God through the merits of His Divine Son. There is not, for fallen man, another means of arriving at final perseverance that this of prayer; but it is a means infallible insofar as it pertains to God’s part, and a means God really and truly placed at he disposal of all men, so that it can be said that any man, as great a sinner as he may have been before, still has it really and truly in his hands throughout the remainder of his life (N 382-3).

“Final perseverance, then, is not given out of justice, but out of mercy… [‘pages 153 to 155 are not shown in this preview’” – we will continue on page 156]

from comment  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/do-you-want-to-go-to-heaven/ 184

What is more, in discovering that eternal life is “to know God, and Jesus Christ whom he sent” (John 17:3) and that what it means to know God is to abide in love, obeying the commandments of Christ (1 John 3–5), we learn that eternal life is not merely unending duration (even the damned have that) but a particular kind of life, namely, a life of love. From this point of view, the warnings passages in Scripture come into better focus, as we understand that by the nature of the case anyone who fails to abide in love cannot abide in eternal life and so cannot enter Heaven, which is something that I briefly discussed in point 2 of the original post.

I do think that there are numerous examples in Scripture, either actual cases or implied in various warnings, of a person who was truly declared righteous subsequently falling from that state of righteousness into a state which is truly declared to be unrighteousness. It might be that here we are working with different understandings of what it means for God to declare someone to be righteous or unrighteous. On my view, God cannot lie and he is not merely a judge; rather, he is the truth and the creator as well as the supreme judge, such that when he declares someone to be righteous, that person is truly righteous because he has been made righteous by God’s powerful, creative declaration, even as the heavens and the earth really sprang into existence by God’s powerful, creative declaration.