Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The second reading for today’s Mass is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 1, verses 3 to 14. Verse 4 of this passage is one of the most powerful verses in all of scripture. It is one that I come back to over and over in my preaching. The reason I do this is because verse 4 tells us in a nutshell why God chose to create us. The entire verse can be read in this way: “[God] chose us in [Christ], before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before Him.”
The first thing to notice here is that God chose us before the foundation of the world. This means first that God chose us. God knew each of us and chose us to live. We can almost see God running through all of the possible human beings and saying over each one of us who has ever lived or will ever live: “I want this person to live.” There are no accidental human beings; each one of us is known by name and loved by God even before we are born.
And God made this choice before the foundation of the world, before God created anything at all. This means that God has known and loved each one of us from all eternity. And we live, each one of us, because God wants to share eternity with each one of us. Further, we are chosen in Christ, which means that Christ himself is the model for each of us. And since Christ is our model, we are each able to be like him.
Finally, God has chosen us to be holy and without blemish before Him. This is where we have fallen short by our sins. Yet even here God continues to choose us. He sends Christ into our world in order to bring us back to our eternal destiny, and through our communion with him throughout our life in this world, we become again what God created us to be.
Reflection by Fr. Aquinas Keusenkothen, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections