Morals of the Church
Library › Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology › Volume II › Book III. On the Aids of the Christian Life, or on the Sacraments › Treatise V. On Penance › Dissertation I. On the Act of Doing Penance › Part III. On the Effects of the Act of Doing Penance

Section — Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology

Section V. On the Reviviscence of Merits

286.

I. Works are distinguished into living, death-bearing, dead, and mortified. Living works are those which are done in the state of grace, and therefore proceed from a living principle, and merit eternal life. Those are called death-bearing which deprive man of the life of grace and of the right to eternal life, or, in other words, mortal sins; likewise - others add - venial sins, since they lead to mortal sins. Dead works are called good works which are done in the state of sin, and therefore do not proceed from a living principle, nor merit eternal life. Mortified works are those which were done in the state of grace, and therefore proceeded from a living principle and merited eternal life, but because of a supervening sin have been deprived of vital force, or of value for eternal life. Moreover:

II. Mortified works, once sin has been remitted through penance, revive, or recover the value for eternal life which they had lost. This is deduced: 1. from Sacred Scripture;1 2. from the Council of Trent;2 and it is affirmed by St. Thomas (3, question 89, article 5), who teaches that mortified merits remain so far as they are in themselves, and in fact do not efficaciously lead to eternal life because of the impediment of supervening sin; but this impediment is supposed to be set aside through penance.

III. As regards the mode or degree of reviviscence, it must be said that the justified person immediately receives a right to all grace previously possessed and to the total essential reward. It is disputed, however, whether the grace previously possessed is immediately infused into the soul - and indeed either all of it, or, as others wish, according to the measure of the present disposition - or only in the first instant after death. Moreover, the preferred opinion is that which teaches that all the grace possessed is immediately infused. For this alone sufficiently preserves the reviviscence of merits such as seems to be deduced from the arguments, and this alone agrees with the proper notion of reviviscence, according to which penance seems to have itself toward reviviscence as removing what prohibits, not by way of disposition.

1 Ezekiel 33:12.

2 Session 6, on Justification, canon 32.

3 Other opinions seem less probable.

The Reviviscence of Merits