For if you live according to your human nature,you are going to die.

Today’s reading reveals the essence of Christianity: the childhood of God. Those who are justified receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who dwells within them. The presence of the Spirit of God shows that the baptized person has become a partaker in God’s nature and is therefore a son of God. Just as the Spirit of God caused the Son of God to take on human nature, so sanctifying grace works to make us adopted sons of God and brothers of Jesus Christ. If a baptized person lives a life in accordance with God’s will, they are free, have nothing to fear, and can rightly call God their Father. The Holy Spirit himself confirms that this is not a vain imagination: ‘We are God’s children’.

The heart, blessed with the infused virtues of faith, hope and love, and the moral virtues and their gifts, gives our soul irrefutable peace and certainty that God dwells within us and that we are his sons and daughters. Everyone can experience the presence of God in their heart and be convinced of this. If we are indeed the adopted sons of God, then we are also God’s heirs and co-heirs with Christ to his glory, for we have followed him on the path of suffering. Just as the Son of God had to suffer and enter into his glory, so must we, his adopted sons and brothers of Christ, follow the same path. Anyone who wants to be a co-heir of Christ’s glory must first be a co-sufferer of his pains.

God is our Father and we are all brothers! That is the essence of Christianity. Our honor and glory lie in being sons of God. St. Louis, King of France, preferred to sign ‘Louis of Poissy’, after the place where he was baptized and became God’s son and heir to the eternal King. Let us cherish the grace of baptism, renewing and multiplying it weekly through the Eucharist and daily through acts of love!