will.

The inefficacy of merely sufficient grace, therefore, is owing to the
resistance of the will and not to any lack of intrinsic power. This is a
truth to which all Catholic systems of grace must conform.

Merely sufficient grace may be subdivided into _gratia proxime sufficiens_
and _gratia remote sufficiens_.

Proximately sufficient grace (also called _gratia operationis_) confers
upon the will full power to act forthwith, while remotely sufficient grace
(also termed _gratia orationis_) confers only the grace of prayer, which
in its turn brings down full power to perform other salutary acts.

The _gratia orationis_ plays a most important role in the divine economy
of grace. God has not obliged Himself to give man immediately all the
graces he needs. It is His will, in many instances, as when we are
besieged by temptations, that we petition Him for further assistance. "God
does not enjoin impossibilities," says St. Augustine, "but in His
injunctions He counsels you both to do what you can for yourself, and to
ask His aid in what you cannot do."(103)

Hence, though grace may sometimes remain ineffective (_gratia inefficax_ =
_gratia vere et mere sufficiens_), it is never insufficient
(_insufficiens_), that is to say, never too weak to accomplish its
purpose.

Calvinism and Jansenism, while retaining the name, have eliminated
sufficient grace from their doctrinal systems.

Jansenius (+ 1638) admits a kind of "sufficient grace," which he calls
_gratia parva_, but it is really insufficient because no action can result
from it unless it is supplemented by another and more powerful grace.(104)
This heretic denounced sufficient grace in the Catholic sense as a
monstrous conception and a means of peopling hell with reprobates.(105)
Some of his followers even went so far as to assert that "in our present
state sufficient grace is pernicious rather than useful to us, and we have
reason to pray: From sufficient grace, O Lord, deliver us!"(106)

{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}) It is an article of faith that there is a merely sufficient grace and
that it is truly sufficient even when frustrated by the resistance of the
will. The last-mentioned point is emphasized by the Second Council of
Orange (A. D. 529): "This also we believe, according to the Catholic
faith, that all baptized persons, through the grace received in Baptism,
and with the help and cooeperation of Christ, are able and in duty bound,
if they will faithfully