Second Sunday after Pentecost: Sunday of All Saints of Rus’-Ukraine; The Holy Hieromartyr Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata.
Romans 2:10-16; Romans 8:28-39; Matthew 4:18-23; Matthew 5:1-16.
Read Matthew 4:18-23
Choices define the person we become. Central to our very being is that only we can choose what we do. We cannot be made to be who we are not willing to be. Instead, God calls us to choose to become what he will give us grace to be.
Jesus called two pairs of brothers to become apostles: Peter and Andrew, James and John. Immediately, they left who and what they were to begin being remade by Jesus. They chose.
But another person in today’s gospel also chose – Jesus. Jesus chose them, and that choice contributed to defining Jesus’s mystical body, the Church, with him as its head. Jesus chose particular people with whom he would be united.
God’s choosing didn’t stop there. He is still choosing. 1 Peter 1:2 tells us that we are “chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.” God chooses us. We have many choices to make in cooperation with God thereafter. 1 Peter 2:9 says that they culminate in being built up together with others to glorify God: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” We still have to choose God, but we can do so in the joyful knowledge that he chose us first.