Editor’s Note: An excellent way to summarize the Message of Fatima is that Our Lady is calling all of us to conversion, reparation, and consecration. Our most recent Issue of The Fatima Crusader (#136, Fall 2025) focused on how to Live the Message of Fatima by emphasizing important Catholic practices along the lines of these three themes. The Fatima Center also recently posted a video by Fr. Karl Stehlin detailing the connection between these themes, the Message of Fatima, and the lives of the three little shepherds to whom Our Lady appeared. Watch this video, Living the Message of Fatima Today: Why and How, or listen to the audio only podcast. We also invite you to read a short excerpt from Frere Michel’s The Whole Truth About Fatima which shows how Fatima Is a Call to Conversion.
How God Moves the Soul from Sin to Salvation
The conversion of a sinner is one of the greatest miracles of grace. It is easy to see bodily healings, answered prayers, or public reversals of life as extraordinary signs of God’s power. Yet the movement of a soul from unbelief or mortal sin into friendship with God is a far greater work. In conversion, Almighty God enlightens the mind, stirs the will, and draws the soul toward repentance without destroying human freedom. This is the work of what theologians call “actual grace.”
In an age that either exaggerates man’s self-sufficiency[1] or collapses into fatalism, Catholics need to recover the Church’s perennial teaching on actual grace. Without it, no one can repent, believe, persevere, or be saved.
Grace Is Necessary for Salvation
Sacred Scripture is unmistakable on this point. Our Lord says, “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). St. Paul likewise teaches, “For it is God Who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will” (Philippians 2:13). The sinner does not convert himself by sheer force of human will. He is moved by God.
The Council of Trent condemned the errors of those who imagined that fallen man could begin the work of salvation without divine help. In its Decree on Justification, the Council teaches that man cannot be justified “without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and without His help” (Session VI, Chap. 5).
That phrase is crucial: “prevenient inspiration.” God acts first. Grace precedes. Conversion begins not in man, but by an act of God.
What Actual Grace Is
Theologians distinguish between sanctifying grace and actual grace. Sanctifying grace is the supernatural life of God in the soul. Actual grace, on the other hand, is a non-permanent supernatural help by which God enlightens the intellect and strengthens the will to do good and avoid evil. The seven Sacraments are the only means we men know of that provide sanctifying grace. There are, however, many means by which men receive actual graces; for example, prayer, sacramentals, reading Scripture, acts of charity, the Sacraments, the intercession of others, etc.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent explains the matter well when it says that God “touches the heart” and moves man interiorly. Likewise, traditional theology teaches that actual grace is given for acts: to pray, to repent, to resist temptation, to make a good confession, to perform works of charity, and to persevere in the state of grace.
Fr. Adolphe Tanquerey defines actual grace as “a supernatural help of God, enlightening our mind and strengthening our will, in order to enable us to perform salutary acts” (Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae).
This is not poetic language. Actual grace is real, necessary, and constant in the Christian life.
Actual Grace and the Beginning of Conversion
Conversion ordinarily begins when God grants the soul light. A man may hear a sermon, suffer a personal loss, read a spiritual book, remember a truth he once ignored, or suddenly feel horror for a sinful life. These are often the external occasions. But the interior cause is grace.
God illumines the intellect so that the soul begins to see reality rightly. Sin appears hateful. Eternity becomes real. The Cross is understood more deeply. Redemptive suffering can even be appreciated and accepted with joy. At the same time, God strengthens the will so that the sinner is not merely informed but moved toward repentance.
The Council of Trent says that the sinner is “moved and aided by divine grace” to convert for his own justification (Session VI, Chap. 5). This statement preserves both truths: grace moves first, but man truly cooperates.
The sinner does not become a puppet. Grace does not destroy freedom. Rather, grace heals and elevates freedom so that the will can truly choose the good.
God Moves First, But Man Must Cooperate
Catholic theology avoids two opposite errors. On the one hand, it rejects Pelagianism, which claims that man can begin the work of salvation by his own powers. On the other hand, it rejects the idea that man is passive like a stone, without real cooperation.
St. Augustine summarized the Catholic doctrine beautifully when he wrote, “He Who created thee without thee, will not justify thee without thee” (Sermon 169). God created us without our consent, but He will not save us without our free cooperation.
Thus, actual grace does not excuse negligence. If God grants the sinner light and impulse to repent, he must respond. He can resist grace. He can delay. He can harden his heart. Scripture warns, “Today if you shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts” (Psalm 94:8).
Conversion is therefore both God’s work and man’s response to God’s work.[2]
Types of Actual Grace
Theologians commonly distinguish between several kinds of actual grace. There is prevenient grace, which comes before our salutary act and prepares the soul. There is operative grace, by which God acts in the soul before it cooperates. There is cooperative grace, by which God assists the soul as it acts with Him.
These distinctions are useful because they show how thoroughly dependent man is upon God. At every stage of the spiritual life, grace comes first, then accompanies and perfects our acts.
Fr. Dominic Prümmer teaches that without actual grace man can perform naturally good acts in the natural order, but he cannot perform salutary acts ordered to eternal life (Manuale Theologiae Moralis). In other words, a man may do something externally decent without grace, but he cannot repent supernaturally, merit Heaven, or turn savingly to God without divine help.
Actual Grace and the Sacraments
The Sacraments presuppose and intensify the action of actual grace. A sinner goes to Confession because grace has already begun to move him. A convert enters the Church because grace has already enlightened his mind. A Catholic perseveres in prayer because grace continues to strengthen him.
Even the desire to pray is itself often the fruit of actual grace. The same is true of sorrow for sin. The Church has always taught that perfect contrition itself is a grace from God. No sinner should presume he can repent whenever he pleases by his own natural strength.
This should make us both humble and grateful. Humble, because we can claim no credit for beginning conversion. Grateful, because God never ceases to pursue our soul.
Why Some Convert and Others Do Not
This question has troubled many souls. Why does one man respond to grace and another resists? Why does one person return to the Sacraments after years away, while another persists in sin?
The Church teaches that God gives sufficient grace to all for salvation, but not all cooperate with it. The mystery of grace and free will is profound, but we must never conclude either that God is unjust or that man is self-saving.
The proper Catholic response is not speculation, but prayer and humble confidence in God’s Providence. We should pray insistently for the conversion of sinners because God truly uses our prayers as secondary causes in obtaining actual graces for others. This is why the Rosary, novenas, sacrifices, and the First Saturday devotion matter so much. We ask God to send the light and strength that only He can give.
Note: There is no grace that men receive which does not first pass through Our Lady. She is not the source of grace, but in accordance with God’s divine providence, She does dispense every grace. Hence, we rightly call Her Mediatrix of All Graces. And our prayers are more effective when we consciously and devotedly go through Our Blessed Mother. (
The Consolation of This Doctrine
The doctrine of actual grace should fill the faithful with confidence. No sinner is beyond hope as long as he lives. God can break through indifference, error, addiction, hatred, and despair in a moment. He who converted St. Mary Magdalene, St. Augustine, and Blessed Bartolo Longo can convert anyone.
This doctrine should also make us attentive. The sudden impulse to pray, the pricking of conscience, the attraction to Confession, the conviction that one must amend one’s life – these are caused by actual graces. They must not be neglected.
How many conversions are lost because a soul delays? How many graces are resisted because a sinner says, “Later”? While God does grant every man sufficient grace, He does not grant such grace at every moment of a person’s life. Actual grace is a gift, but it is also an urgency.
Conclusion
Conversion is never merely psychological, emotional, or self-generated. At its root it is supernatural. God acts first. He enlightens the mind, strengthens the will, and draws the soul toward repentance by actual grace.
Without that grace, no sinner can return to God. With it, even the hardest heart can be changed.
Catholics should therefore pray constantly for actual graces: for themselves, for fallen-away family members, for hardened sinners, and for the conversion of the whole world. In doing so, they acknowledge the truth expressed by Our Lord Himself: “No man can come to Me, except the Father, Who hath sent Me, draw him” (John 6:44).
And when a soul does return to God, all glory belongs first and last to divine grace.
Endnotes
[1] This heresy is known as Pelagianism. Its originator was a British monk, Pelagius. St Augustine was its chief opponent and the Church dogmatically condemned this error. Nevertheless, this error is alive and strong today among Catholics, especially since the heresy of modernism glorifies man, exalts human nature, considers all religions good enough for salvation, and coalesces (or blurs) the supernatural into the natural.
[2] Many mysteries of the Catholic Faith are better described by both/and than by either/or. Jesus is both God and man. God is both One and Three. Mary is both Virgin and Mother. The Church is both human and divine. Heresies always result when one attempts to emphasize either this or that aspect of the mystery to the detriment of the other.
Thus, one could say conversion is both 100% God’s grace and also 100% man’s free will at work. An error results when one considers it a zero-sum game as if the more divine grace then the less human will or vice versa. Rather, grace operates on the supernatural order and human will on the natural order, and these two are not in conflict with one another but are supportive of each other. How precisely these two interact remains a divine mystery.