God Has Elected Us In Baptism

What really matters is not our own efforts and abilities, but the efficacy of God’s action in us, who has chosen us for himself without any merit on our part.

Reading: Acts 13:13-25

The following homily was preached to the student brothers during Compline. You can listen here or read below:

We live in times when we are accustomed to having everything as a product at our service. The leitmotif of our mindset is a question: ‘What do you have that you did receive?’ Everything we possess is a result of our effort and ability.

This anthropocentrism views God as another product made to satisfy us, something we can ‘obtain’. Consequently, the primacy in the universe belongs to our freedom, to man. We are good because we choose to follow the law of God, to convert to the Gospel, to renounce mortal sin… Many people, even Catholics, are willing to confess “we believe in the human being”.

Saint Paul experienced this drama of ‘belief in man’. Indeed, he was a Pharisee. One of his chief principles was that the observance of the law by the people of Israel would restore the favour of God to his people. But he was called by the risen Christ on his way to Damascus. After being blind in both soul and body, he received the Holy Spirit, converted, and was baptised, and he discovered that:

‘For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified‘ [Rom 8:29-30].

The good news that St Paul preaches in this reading to his brothers in the synagogue is that:

The God of this people Israel chose our fathers; he chose Samuel to prophesy, he chose Saul to begin his kingdom, and he chose David to reign with a heart like his own.

God chooses, calls, consecrates, sends…

God has chosen us, and for this, we have been baptised.

We could have been born in other nations where the gospel is not known. We could have grown up in an atheist family. We have had infinite possibilities to not believe in God, to not know the revelation, and to not be baptised.

God is providence, maintaining everything in existence; he leads all causes and contingencies for the honour of his Name.

He doesn’t owe anyone anything, and everything that he does is out of love for himself.

In Scripture, God chose Abraham and his people freely. He elected them without any merit.

These people he chose were saved from the hands of Pharaoh in Egypt, because God fulfils his promises to the chosen.

Thus, in the creed, we say that “we believe in one baptism” (Confiteor unum baptisma), and we don’t assert that “we believe in the human being”. We believe in the efficacy of God’s action in us. Our freedom depends on him. We need him to do good.

As Paul says:

‘There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift‘ [Eph 4:4-7].

Image: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo – Conversion of Saint Paul (c. 1675-1682). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.