Excerpt from "The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection" by St. Alphonsus Liguori:
I really cannot see how a Christian can fulfill the precept of hope -- hoping, as he ought, with sure confidence for salvation from God, and for the graces necessary for its attainment -- unless he holds it as an infallible truth that God commonly gives to every individual the grace actually to pray, if he chooses, without need of a further special assistance...
Our hope of salvation, and of receiving the means necessary for its attainment, must be certain on God's part. The motives on which this certainty are founded, as we have seen, are the power, the mercy, and the truth of God; and of these the strongest and most certain motive is God's infallible faithfulness to the promise which he has made to us, through the merits of Jesus Christ, to save us, and to give us the graces necessary for salvation; because, though we might believe God to be infinite in power and mercy, nevertheless, as Giovenino well observes, we could not feel confident expectation of God's saving us, unless he had surely promised to do so. But this promise is conditional, if we actively correspond to God's grace and pray, as is clear from the Scriptures: "Ask and ye shall receive; if ye ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it to you..." For this cause the Fathers and theologians, maintain that prayer is a necessary means of salvation...
It cannot be denied that God can easily, with his omnipotence, incline and move men's hearts freely to will that which he wills, as the Scriptures teach: "The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord; whithersoever He will, He shall turn it;", "I will put My Spirit in the midst of you, and I will cause you to walk in My commandments;"...
And it cannot be denied that St. Augustine and St. Thomas have taught the opinion of the efficaciousness of grace in itself, by its own nature...On the other hand, our opinion is quite consonant to the doctrine of truly sufficient grace being given to all, by corresponding to which a man will gain efficacious grace; while by not corresponding, but resisting, he will deservedly be refused this efficacious grace. And thus all excuse is taken away from those sinners who say that they have not strength to overcome their temptations; because if they had prayed, and made use of the ordinary grace, by which every one is enabled at least to pray (without needing a further special and unusual grace), and by prayer to obtain further assistance to enable him to fulfill the law. I do not know how he can explain all those texts of the Scripture, in which souls are exhorted to return to God, to overcome temptation, and to correspond to the divine call: "Return, ye transgressors, to the heart;", "Return and live, Be converted and do penance"...
I cannot tell, I say, supposing it were true that the grace of prayer were not given to all, to enable them thereby to obtain the further assistance necessary for salvation, how these texts could be explained, and how the sacred writers could so forcibly exhort all men, without any exception, to be converted, to resist the enemy, to walk in the way of virtue, and, for this end, to pray with confidence and perseverance--if the grace of doing well, or at least of praying, were not granted to all, but only to those who have the gift of efficacious grace.
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