St. Augustine was also one of the first Church Fathers to articulate very clearly why the Holy Spirit makes such a difference. It is because the Holy Spirit gives us grace. “Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life” (CCC 1996). In giving us his grace, God helps us to come closer to him in two ways. Sometimes he intervenes in our lives in a special, more immediate