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What I know on grae I know from PED:
First, what is grace?
In Scripture it can mean a benevolence or condescension of a higher personage onto a lower (God to man being the supreme example). It can mean a gift that is unmerited, gratuitious. It can also mean a "pleasing charm", and lastly it can mean "the thanks for favours received
In theology what matters is the second scriptural use, that of an unmerited gift. Broadly this can include natural favours and such, like creation. In the more proper sense it refers to unmerited supernatural gifts.
This is the sense we will take it. Grace is a supernatural and unmerited gift from God.
The first division is simple. There us Uncreated Grace and created grace. Uncreated grace is God Himself... this grace is given in the communication of God Himself to man. In the Incarnation, in His indwelling in our souls, in the Eucharist and most supremely in the Beatific Vision. Created graces are supernatural gifts or operations that are not God, but from God.
These created graces undergo a second division in most theological schools.
The first is call the grace of God or of the Creator. These are the graces bestowed upon angels and Adam and Eve before the fall, unconnected with Redemption (though also Adam and Eve, and the angels, were unworthy of these gifts even without sin)
The second set are the graces of Christ or the Redeemer. These are the graces that God bestowed on man after the fall, either in view of Christ's future redemption (as with the restoration of Adam and Eve to grace) or as a prior event renewed in the Mass (as with us now)
The Scotists (Franciscans mostly) do not accept this distinction, because they believe that Christ would have become Incarnate without the Fall and that all graces then are in virtue of Christ as the Head of Creation...
Graces are also divided as being external or internal. An external grace is all that Pelagius admitted. It is the things external to us that affect us morally, i.e by example. Christ's teaching, Revelation, sermons, the Liturgy. Internal gracs are those that affect the soul directly and physically, such as sanctifying grace, the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, et al.
These internal graces are further divided
Gratia gratis data- This essentially means "a really freely given grace". These graces have their end in sanctifying others not the recipient. Charismata (gift of tongues, pophecy) the powers of the priest to consecrate, and the power of jurisdiction (Confession, etc). Having these graces, of themselves, have nothing to do with one's own holiness. A priest still has the grace of confesting the Eucharist when he is in mortal sin for example. Though using them rightly can involve gratia gratum faciens
Gratia gratum faciens- This means "a working grace" or "grace making one graced" essentially. These are for the recipient's sanctification
Gratia gratum faciens is divided into habitual or sanctifying grace, and actual grace. Habitual grace or sanctifying grace is a constant quality of the soul that makes a man just and a friend of God. Actual grace is an intervention by God to direct the soul to attaining or preserving sanctifying grace
Actual grace has a three-fold division
1. Illuminating grace enlightens the intellect. Inspirational grace strengthens the will
2. Prevenient grace (aka antecedent grace) is that which preceeds the act of the will. It is dogma that God makes the first move with prevenient grace...the very act of faith, sorrow for sins, the very desire to be baptised is all granted by God. Grace then is not just a freely offered thing to be accepted or reject, with man being the first to move in the relationship. But God spurs him to accept grace and cooperate with it. Subsequent grace is that which is present whilst doing the act and supports and assists the will
3. Now do we arrive on the much disputed sufficent and efficacious distinction. Quickly defined without preference to one School, sufficient grace grants the power, the potency to act. Just as one can state that an infant is a rational creature, because reason exists in him in potency, though not in act. Efficacious grace de facto secures that the action to be performed (a salutary action, eg. Confession) is actually performed. Whenever we actually perform a salvic act then, the grace is efficacious because it is not merely a potency anymore but an actual act that is truly effect.
St. Thomas teaches that the grace of repentance is always sufficient for perfect contrition, so that when a man has imperfect contrition, the grace was sufficient for perfect, efficacious for imperfect. This would seem to imply that sufficient and efficacious are not really distinct, if one and the same grace is called both merely sufficient (for perfect contrition) and efficacious (for imperfect).
I would answer that efficacious grace is offered in sufficient grace. Such grace is truly sufficient, one can will to do the act that it is given for. In doing so, they act under efficacious grace, which is only denied when one resists sufficient grace. So the grace sufficient for perfect contrition was resisted as to its perfection, but cooperated with in an imperfect way.
Efficacious grace then is not distinct from sufficient grace the way my desk is from my bed, but act is from potency. I.e. efficacious grace actualizes sufficient grace, it is like its "form."
So when one acts under grace, we do not say he is acting with merely sufficient grace, since such grace was actualized by efficacious grace and hence is no longer merely sufficient. It may even be said to be efficacious, the same way my desk is said to be varnished even though the act of varnishing was distinct from the desk itself.
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"May our tongues proclaim Your truth. May Your Cross be a protection for us as we let our tongues be turned into new harps and sing hymns with fiery lips"
-From the introduction to Our Father, "On the feasts of the Lord and other important feasts", Syro Malabar rite
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