First Sunday in Lent AD 2026

Saint Paul warns us in today's Epistle: “Receive not the grace of God in vain.” How should we understand this? How is it possible to receive the grace of God in vain? Isn’t God’s grace irresistible?

The idea that God’s grace is irresistible is neither biblical nor in accordance with the teaching of the Church, and leads to the Calvinist heresy of double predestination, according to which God has predestined some people to salvation and others to damnation. The Church, on the other hand, teaches that the grace of God is preventive: it precedes our faith and leads us to conversion and justification, but we are also capable of hardening our hearts and resisting the call of God’s grace, because God awaits our free response to His grace and love.

Prevenient grace prepares our hearts and wills to awaken in us a desire for God and a love for Him. Unfortunately, it can happen, as Saint Paul warns, that we receive God’s grace in vain. This happens when we think that we don’t really need God’s grace because we can rely on our own goodness and righteousness. Or when we begin to think that because God has saved and accepted us through His grace, it doesn’t matter how we live.

Saint Paul has some rather harsh words to say about this: “What communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?” If we want to receive the grace of God not in vain, then we must put all our hope in Him and live in His righteousness and love, “giving no offence in anything,” for “now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.”