MAY52024

Martin Luther insisted that “faith alone” saves and not any of the good deeds that we do. In other words, God is always the actor and we the responders. While that is correct as far as it goes how to live it out can diverge in practice. For example, you will hear in certain quarters that in order to be saved you have to “make Jesus your personal savior.” But if you are the one doing the “making” that is not what God is doing what what you are doing. St. John admonishes us. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that God loved us. Faith is not something we produce but are given. During the Catholic baptismal rite after professing our baptismal promises the presider asks the parents or the adult being baptized, “Is it your will that your child (or you) should be baptized in the faith we have just professed?” But Jesus said, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.” So underlying that baptismal ritual lies a deeper question. Do you choose to respond to the call of Christ to the grace being offered to you to enter the life-giving waters of baptism? The prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane is the model of the prayer of faith: Not my will, but thine be done.