I have been educated to believe that if a person was not in the 'state Of grace' when death came, that person would not go to heaven. Ok, how does a person tell, or how can a person 'know', that he or she is or is not in a state of grace?

Thanks for your question. I will try to give you a satisfactory answer.

The Church looks at grace as a relationship with Christ. Being in the state of grace is being fully inrelationship with Christ, free of anything that would interfere with the intimacy God desires to have with us. By our informed conscience we can know if we are living in a way pleasing to God. If we are lukewarm in that relationship, it is not as intense as God desires through our own fault. We move away from god, not the other way around. If we completely turn away from God, that is what is serious or mortal to the relationship.. If we do things that are less serious but weaken or ignore our relationship with God, those are lesser or venial. The state of grace is not having serious or lesser actions, attitudes or omissions keeping us from that full intimate relationship with our God who loves us.

Look at it as you would with any intimate relationship; with a spouse, child or parent. When we pay attention to the relationship, it remains strong. When we ignore it or do things that lessen the connection we have, we are not in full relationship as we could be. Our relationship with God is something like this. We choose to lessen or sever our relationship through our choices.

To be more specific, we always have actual grace, that is, the presence of God calling us to live a life in accord with the bible & the Church's teachings. Sanctifying grace is being free from sin. Since only the individual and God knows when that is, each person is responsible to examine their life, have true contrition for sin and turn back to God through the sacraments and prayer.