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How does the justification of a sinner take place with his cooperation? (ST I-II, 111, 2; 113) Justification essentially consists in friendship with God that is obtained by divine grace, first of all by healing our human nature, our soul, of sin, of original sin and of actual sins we have committed, by elevating our human nature and by strengthening it. If one thinks of the first justification, that is, the justification by which we become members of Christ, children of God, this justification takes place essentially, principally, and totally by God's grace. In the sense that God puts his grace in us, he pushes or moves us, as Saint Thomas writes -- the word isn't very elegant in our modern languages -- God moves our free will to consent and to receive his grace. God also moves our soul to an act of faith and of charity towards him and towards our neighbour. And from there proceeds the remission of sins. Thus, everything comes from God's action, from start to finish, who intervenes in the core of our being, and who even intervenes in the movement, the act of free will by which we consent to divine grace and through our acts of faith, through the act of faith and of charity, without which one cannot be saved. If we now consider, in a broader manner, justification in Christian life, which is the continuation, the fruit, the development of this initial justification, man's collaboration takes place precisely in the "yes" that it gives to divine grace. And a "yes" that always comes from a disposition by God, which always precedes our action, which gives us grace as a quality of the soul, and which also intervenes to move us to act, to enable us to perform just and holy acts. Here, too, there is a structure of cooperation where God and man do not act in competition but where God is the source of what man accomplishes, which helps understand, for example, what merit is, a topic that generates many difficulties for many theologians, and also in preaching. Sometimes one sees merit as a pretension of man who would arrogate to himself a right with respect to God. Whereas merit is nothing other than the blossoming, under the action of God, of the gifts that God himself has placed in man. One can illustrate what Fr. Gilles just said by turning to baptism. Here there is something in St Thomas, in the questions on grace, question 109 and others in the Prima Secundae, which are enlightening. Recall that baptismal grace is a positive and a negative grace, if I may say so. Positive: that is the grace of filial adoption. Negative: that is the grace of purification from the original stain and from personal sins. Now, it so happens that the baptismal rite, the properly sacramental rite, the essential rite, only speaks about a part of the grace. That is to say, there is an ablution with water, which...