This time of year the OCIA meetings are well into the Sacraments of the Catholic Church. There are a lot of discussions and questions about grace and the terms the Church uses to describe grace: sanctifying, actual, sacramental, charismatic and prevenient. It is the last one that people are least likely to be familiar with.

Prevenient (from the Latin: comes before) grace is a concept that refers to the grace of God that comes before any human action. It is the grace that enables a person to respond to God’s call and to choose to follow Him.  It has been described as God’s safety net placed beneath everyone, giving them a chance to choose whether to grab onto it or fall. It’s God’s ongoing, prior work in every life, making salvation a real possibility for all, not just a few.

St. Augustine of Hippo developed the concept of prevenient grace (Latin: gratia praeveniens, “grace that precedes”) as God’s divine initiative, a grace that comes before any human action, drawing people toward faith by overcoming the bondage of sin, enabling a desire for God, and preparing the soul for conversion. Prevenient grace can be understood as God’s initial help that allows us to respond to Him and make good choices. It’s about God reaching out to us first, even before we realize it or take any steps toward Him.

St. Basil Great has a wonderful description of prevenient grace in his Detailed Rules for Monks:

Love of God is not something that we can be taught.  We did not learn from someone else how to rejoice in light or want to live, or to love our parents or guardians.  It is the same, perhaps even more so, with our love for God:  it does not come by another’s teaching.  As soon as the living creature (that is, man) comes to be, a power of reason is implanted in us like a seed, containing within it the ability and the need to love.  When the school of God’s law admits this power of reason, it cultivates it diligently, skillfully nurtures it, and with God’s help brings it to perfection.

God desires that all be saved (1 Timothy 2:3-4) and before our first moment of being is already at work in our lives.