Grace includes both.
The saving grace we can receive through Jesus without deserving it.
The grace that changes our heart, transforms our identity, through the work of the Holy Spirit.
The grace to live in contact with our Heavenly Father and grow/transform towards the image of Jesus Christ.
Grace is both wider and less demanding than some may think.
Wider in the sense that it covers the attitude and work of God towards and in humans, especially the followers of Jesus but also the good he wants for all humans.
Less demanding in the sense that we can only receive it, not earn it. It is not dependent on how well we manage to obey God, how good our acts are, because none of that makes us good enough to deserve the grace. We can just receive it like a child. What happens after that in our life is the consequence of the grace, not something demanded for grace.
Which is also the definition of mortal sin; but as I said I think that sins that really meet the three criteria could be rarer than we think (even if it’s better to think and behave as if the opposite is true).
All of this. Perfect. One can choose to resist Grace but he can do nothing to “deserve” it. Even praying to receive a particular grace is just that: praying for an undeserved gift.
Agreed that grace is a gift and completely unearned but, in the Catholic faith, there is such a thing as not being in a state of grace through serious sin. Essentially by choosing to do the wrong thing and rejecting God’s law, one is rejecting also the freely given gift of grace. We disconnect ourselves from the uncreated energy from God or He disconnects us from that source of grace…I frankly think the latter. God is all loving but He is also a just judge. Sinners are burned in unquenchable fire.
It’s the former. But as I said, we don’t know how often the condition for a true “disconnection” from God’s Grace are met, even if it’s better to err on the side of caution.
And eternal perdition is certainly something one brings upon themselves, not something imposed unilaterally by an angry God.
Spe Salvi 44-47, bolded emphasis added
“ In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Lk16:19-31), Jesus admonishes us through the image of a soul destroyed by arrogance and opulence, who has created an impassable chasm between himself and the poor man; the chasm of being trapped within material pleasures; the chasm of forgetting the other, of incapacity to love, which then becomes a burning and unquenchable thirst. We must note that in this parable Jesus is not referring to the final destiny after the Last Judgement, but is taking up a notion found, inter alia, in early Judaism, namely that of an intermediate state between death and resurrection, a state in which the final sentence is yet to be pronounced.
This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. The early Church took up these concepts, and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to examine here the complex historical paths of this development; it is enough to ask what it actually means. With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell[37]. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are[38].
Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing impact of God’s judgement according to each person’s particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.“