In the biblical account, an Angel appears to Cornelius and proclaims exactly how he has found favor with God: "Your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God" (Acts 10:4). It was his faithful prayer and love for the poor that placed Cornelius in a position to receive the visitation of God's grace. But this grace had still not come to dwell within him, for he was not yet regenerated in baptism.

"For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18)

The fruit of the acquisition of divine grace is not only good works and virtue but an actual union with God. First, grace works to purify the heart from all sinful passions and inclinations. Those who reach this spiritual state are called dispassionate. This does not mean that one is uncaring or disconnected, but that the energies of the soul have been directed away from anything evil and redirected toward God. The dispassionate person is not compelled by any sinful impulse. Rather, he is free to love and to choose to love God and others without concern for self or for what other may think.

That grace is a real and substantial thing given by God to His creation is verified by several important passages of Holy Scripture. First, the Acts of the Apostles relate how many miraculously healings occurred through Saint Paul, "so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them" (Acts 19:12).

Saint Dionysius the Areopagite was born of noble parents who were pagans and was reared in the most glorious city of Athens, Greece. He began the study of Greek wisdom in his childhood, and such as his success therein, that by the age of twenty-five he had surpassed all his peers in his knowledge of philosophy. Nevertheless, he then departed to the city named Heliopolis, in the land of Egypt, where learned teachers had lived since antiquity, that he might perfect his knowledge.

"But Jesus said, 'Somebody touched Me, for I perceive power going out from Me" (Luke 8:46).

As the Apostle Peter was preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ to Cornelius and the relatives and friends he had gathered together, they received the Gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:44). Even as the Apostle explained that the Logos/Word of God had become flesh to open all flesh to the life and power of God, these Gentiles seekers were filled with Divine grace through the Descent of the Holy Spirit.