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Sanctifying grace
According to a commonly accepted categorization, made by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, grace can be given either to make the person receiving it pleasing to God (gratia gratum faciens)—so that the person is sanctified and justified—or else to help the receiver lead someone else to God (gratia gratis data). The former type of grace, gratia gratum faciens, in turn, can be described as sanctifying or habitual grace—when it refers to the divine life which, according to the Church, infuses a person's soul once he is justified; or else as actual grace, when it refers to those punctual (not habitual) helps that are directed to the production of sanctifying grace where it does not already exist, or its maintenance and increase it where it is already present. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

"Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification."

The infusion of sanctifying grace, says the Church, transforms a sinner into a holy child of God, and in this way a person participates in the Divine Sonship of Jesus Christ and receives the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Sanctifying grace remains permanently in the soul as long as one does not reject one's adopted sonship by committing a mortal sin, which severs one's friendship with God. Less serious sins, venial sin, although they allow "charity to subsist," they offends and wounds it." However, God is infinitely merciful, and sanctifying grace can always be restored to the penitent heart, normatively in the Sacrament of Reconciliation (or Sacrament of Penance).