In the widest sense of the word, merit signifies any kind of excellence or worthiness. In this sense, a picture is said to have merit; and purely physical or intellectual perfections, which are merely natural gifts, are said to merit admiration and praise. In the strict sense of the word, merit signifies the quality by which certain free, voluntary acts entitle the person who performs them to an adequate recompense. It is in this sense that merit is ascribed to the good works of a just man. These works are said by Catholic theologians to deserve eternal life by a merit of condignity and a title of justice.
What is meant by merit of condignity? It means that there is an equality of dignity or intrinsic worth and value between the work performed and the recompense bestowed. This is easily understood in regard to merely human affairs. It is not easy to understand, however, how a creature can deserve the reward of eternal life from the Creator. Good works, however excellent they may be in the finite order, and as measured by a human standard, appear to be totally incommensurate with the infinite, and therefore wanting in all condignity with an infinite recompense. So far as the mere physical entity of the works is concerned, this is really so. The gift of a cup of cold water to a person suffering from thirst, the recital of a few prayers, a trivial act of self-denial, evidently bear no proportion to eternal beatitude. Neither does a life like that of St. Paul, filled with labors, or a long course of penance and prayer like that of St. Romuald, or a martyrdom like that of St. Polycarp. The mere extent or duration of the labor or suffering, considered as something endured for the sake of God, is nothing in comparison with the crown of immortal life. The condignity of good works is not derived from an equality or proportion between their physical extent and duration and the physical extent and duration of the recompense. It is derived from an equality in kind between the interior principle from which good works proceed, and the interior principle of beatitude. The interior principle of good works is charity; not a merely natural charity, but a supernatural, a divine charity, produced by the Holy Spirit. Good works proceed from a supernatural principle, and are performed by a concurrence of the human will with the divine Spirit. They have, therefore, a superhuman, divine quality, and are elevated to the supernatural order, the same order to which eternal beatitude belongs. They are, therefore, equal to it in dignity in this sense, that they are equally supernatural. The principle of divine charity in the soul is, moreover, the germ of the eternal life itself, which is promised as the reward of the acts which proceed from charity. The life of grace is the life of glory begun, and the life of glory is the life of grace consummated. The germ is equal in grade and quality with the tree which it produces, though not equal in extent and perfection. In the same manner, a little act, like that of giving a cup of water to another for the love of God, although trivial in itself, contains a principle which is capable of uniting the soul to God for all eternity. It is the principle of divine love, making the soul like to God, imitating on a small scale those acts of the love of God toward men which are the most stupendous, and therefore, making the soul worthy to be loved by God with a love of complacency similar in kind to that love which he has toward himself.
Again, the value and merit of services rendered by one person to another are estimated, not alone by the substance of the services rendered, but by the quality of the person who renders them. An article of small utility or cost is sometimes more valued as a token of affection from a dear friend, or as a sign of esteem and honor from a person of high rank, than a large sum of money would be which had been accumulated by the industry of a servant. The good works of a just man fall under this category. They are estimated according to the quality and rank of the person who performs them. The just man is the friend of God, and the services he renders to God are valued accordingly, not as so much work done, but as tokens of love and fidelity. As a friend of God, the just man is a person of high rank in the scale of being. He is a "partaker of the divine nature," as St. Peter distinctly affirms. His human nature is exalted and sublimated to a certain similitude with the nature of God; and the acts which proceed from it have a corresponding dignity and elevation, proportioned to their end, which is eternal life, or the consummation of the union between human nature and the divine nature in eternal beatitude. The just man is the adopted son of God the Father, through his union with God the Son incarnate. This adoption into a participation with Jesus Christ in his sonship reflects the dignity and excellence of the person of Christ upon his person and upon all his works. As a member of Christ and a son of God, his person and his works are superior to the whole natural order, and, therefore, there is nothing which has the relation of condignity toward them except the supernatural order itself.
It is evident, therefore, that regenerate nature has condignity with the state of glory, and that the good works which proceed from it have condignity with degrees of splendor in this state of glory. Regenerate nature bears the image of God, aspires after union with God, is fitted to find its beatitude in the vision of God, is made apt and worthy to be admitted into the kingdom of heaven. It demands, therefore, as its last complement, the lumen gloriae which enables it to see God face to face. The personal love of the soul to God as its friend and Father, and the personal love of God to the soul as his friend and son, require that they should have mutual vision of each other and live together. This living with God is eternal life, which is, therefore, the only fitting recompense for the love of God exercised by the just man upon earth.
Theologians do not, however, regard the title in strict justice to a supernatural reward, or the ratio of condign merit, as consisting solely in the condignity of the meritorious works themselves. They place it partially in the promise of God, or the decree of his providence which he has promulgated, in which special rewards are assigned as the recompense of good works performed in the state of grace. Therefore, they say, the reward of eternal life is due in strict justice, not by an obligation arising per se from the act of the creature, but by an obligation of the Creator to himself to fulfil his own word. They say that God may require, by virtue of his sovereign dominion, any amount of service from the creature as his simple due, without giving him any reward for it; that he may even annihilate him if he pleases, and, moreover, that the holy acts of the blessed in heaven, although they have a perfect condignity with supernatural rewards, do not receive any. Therefore, they say, a creature cannot merit a reward from God according to rigorous justice, but only according to a rule of justice derived from the free determination and promise of God. Scotus and some others even hold that the condignity of meritorious works with the promised reward is altogether extrinsic, and denotes merely that they are conformed to the standard or rule which is laid down by the divine law. It is, therefore, only required in strictness by the definition of the church, that one should confess that the good works of the just man entitle him to a supernatural reward by virtue of a promise which God has given. Those who are so extremely frightened at the sound of the phrase, "merit of condignity," as applied to men, can adopt the opinion of Scotus if they please. For our own part, we prefer the other and more common doctrine of condignity which we have already explained. We do not apprehend any danger to the glory of the Almighty from the exaltation of his own works, or any diminution of the merits of Christ from the glorification of his saints. On the contrary, the power and glory of God are magnified the more, the more like to himself the creature is shown to be which he has created. "God is admirable in his saints;" and, the more excellent their works are, the greater is the praise and homage which accrues to him from these works which are offered up to him as acts of worship. The only error to be feared is the attributing of something to the creature which he derives from himself, as having self-existent, independent being. To attribute to angel or man as much good as is in a withered leaf, is equivalent to a total denial of God, if this good is not referred to God as first cause. But to attribute to created nature all possible good, even to the degree of hypostatic union with the divine nature, does not detract in the slightest degree from the truth that God alone is good in himself, if the good of the creature is referred to him as its source and author. No doubt all right to existence, to immortality, to felicity of any kind, is derived from God, and is originally a free gift to the creature from him. But the right is a real right, of which the creature has just possession when God has given it to him, one which may be an inalienable right in certain circumstances, that is, a right which God cannot, in consistency with his own attributes, withdraw. When God creates a rational nature, in which he has implanted the desire and expectation of immortal existence and felicity, he implicitly promises immortality and felicity. We do not like to hear it said that he can annihilate such a creature or withhold from it the felicity after which it naturally aspires, unless it be as a just punishment for sin. So, when God creates man anew in the supernatural order, by giving him the grace of regeneration, he gives him an implicit promise of eternal beatitude. It is very true that he can exact from him any amount of service he pleases, as a debt that is due to his sovereign majesty; yet he cannot justly withhold from him final beatitude, unless he forfeits it by his own fault. The special reward annexed to every good work is undoubtedly due only by virtue of the explicit promise which God has made, to reward every such good work by an increase of grace and glory. It is also true that God does confer some degrees of glory on the just out of pure liberality and beyond the degree of merit. Moreover, the period of merit is limited by the decree of God to this life, because it is fitting that the creature should increase and progress, during his probation, toward the full measure of his perfection, and should afterward remain in that perfection when he has arrived at his term. We think, therefore, that we have made it plain enough that good works have a merit of condignity in relation to eternal life, and nevertheless derive this merit from the promise and appointment of God, subject to such conditions as he has seen fit, in his sovereign wisdom and liberality, to establish.
The doctrine we have laid down detracts in no way from the merits of Christ. Christ alone has the principle of merit in his own person as an original source. He alone has merited of condignity grace to be bestowed on others. His merits alone are the cause of the remission of sins, and the bestowal of regenerating, sanctifying, saving grace. His merits merits of the saints as the head is superior to the inferior members of the body. His incarnation, life, and death are, in a word, the radical meritorious cause of human salvation from the beginning to the end; and, in their own proper sphere or order of causation, are entirely alone. Christ is the only mediator of redemption and salvation between God and man, in whom the Father is reconciling the world to himself. His acts alone are referable to no principle higher or more ultimate than his own personality. All merely human grace, sanctity, or merit is, therefore, to be referred to him as its chief author, and to merely human subjects only as recipients or secondary and concurrent causes. It is easy to understand, therefore, what is meant by presenting the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints before God as a motive for bestowing grace. The saints have not merited anything over and above that which Christ has merited, nor have they merited, by a merit of condignity, even the application of the merits of Christ to others. Through their personal merits, they have obtained a kind of right of friendship to ask in a specially efficacious manner for graces and favors to be conferred on those for whom they intercede. Their mediation and merits are, therefore, only efficacious by way of impetration and prayer, and not by virtue of a right which they have obtained by a title of justice. This is what is meant by merit of congruity, which denotes a certain fitness in a person to obtain from God the favors for which he asks. This merit of congruity is all that is ascribed to the Blessed Virgin or the saints, as a groundwork of their intervening power, by any Catholic theologian. It is the same in kind with that which the just on earth possess, by virtue of which they obtain, through their prayers, blessings and graces for other persons. It is easy to see, therefore, how completely the Catholic doctrine is misunderstood by those who imagine that it either places man in the room of Christ, as his own Saviour, or substitutes the mediation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints for the mediation of Christ.