The Christian life is neither purely by grace alone nor works alone. It is a tension, a dynamic of both being intertwined and perhaps not entirely separate from each other as people often make it out to be.

Surely, it is by grace that we are saved and not of our own works or capabilities. Had it not been for a God Who condescended by making Himself "slightly lower than the angels" so He could reach us, we would not have been able to reach Him on our own accord. No amount of revelation from on high would have been able to open our eyes, save for God coming to be one of us so that we could see Him and hear Him and touch Him.

But now that the means is given us to reach God because God has reached us, by grace, our faith needs to be worked out in order that we can arrive at the intended destination of becoming truly human the way God has intended for us to be. The graces that we so often receive through the sacraments are to be appropriated by the regenerated human will given through the Holy Spirit at our baptism and confirmation.

The lives of a countless many are hardly transformed even though they so frequently encounter Jesus the Word in the liturgy of the Church. Here is the reason: the grace received is not appropriated by the human will.

Just as works without faith is a vain form of behaviourism, faith without works is dead. Who said we had to choose either one?