Trusting God's grace means trusting God's love for us rather than our love for God. [...] Therefore our prayers should consist mainly of rousing our awareness of God's love for us rather than trying to rouse God's awareness of our love for him, like the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:26-29).
Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.
Without self-knowledge you have no root in yourselves personally; you may endure for a time, but under affliction or persecution your faith will not last. This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church. They cast off the form of truth, because it never has been to them more than a form. They endure not, because they never have tasted that the Lord is gracious; and they never have had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.
"Grace to me is a little bit of extra help when you're feeling stuck or doomed or, probably, hopefully, out of good ideas on how to save yourself, and how to salvage the situation or the friendship or the whatever it is," Anne Lamott once told me. "I wish it was accompanied by harp music so you could know that's what was happening, but for me it's that extra pause or that extra breath or that extra minute's patience against all odds." On that first trip to Ireland, grace--the kick-in-the-pants, clarifying, cosmic-pause-button kind of grace--didn't just have a harp. It had an entire soundtrack..."
The people were created in the image of God and thus they were within the precinct of His grace, even the ones who didn't know Him...the ones who withdrew themselves from His presence.
No one is climbing the spiritual ladder. We don't continually improve until we are so spiritual we no longer need God. We die and are made new, but that's different from spiritual self-improvement.