The Grit of Grace

I'm impressed by a sentence toward the end of the voiceover which introduces the opening scene of the current movie, "True Grit." The voice, that of the girl in the film speaking in retrospect as an adult, quotes someone who has written, "Nothing is free except the grace of God."

I never much liked the Church's teaching of grace as something quantitative (on the popular level), that is, as an "amount" of holiness which rises and falls in one's soul, or as something ontological (on the scholarly level), that is, as a category of being insofar as it is "participation in the life of God." I prefer the commonsense(?) explanation of grace as something more experiential and qualitative, that is, simply but profoundly God's graciousness toward us: his bountiful, unearned, providential care and giving to us in the exigencies of our daily living.