Repose of Blessed Olga (Olha), Princess of Kiev, named Helen at Holy Baptism (c. 970). Holy and Praise-worthy Martyr Euphemia (303). Hoshiv Icon of the Mother of God (Attestation of Miracles by Metropolitan Athanasius Sheptytsky, 1737).
Galatians 3:23-29. Matthew 25:1-13.
Read Galatians 3:23-29
St. Paul describes the Jewish law as “our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24-25). Now that faith has come, “we are no longer under a custodian” (Gal. 3:25). Jesus told Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Jn. 3:5). Coming out of the waters of baptism, our faith in Jesus Christ has made us born again into a new creation, as children of God by adoption. As God’s children, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female” because in Christ, we are one (Gal. 3:28). Since we are Christ’s and have clothed ourselves in Christ at baptism, we are also the seed of the patriarch Abraham and heirs of the promise God made to him and his descendants for his faith.
Pope Benedict XVI once told an audience gathered in St. Peter’s Square: “Faith is a gift of God, but it is also a profoundly free and human act.” In his work On the Holy Spirit, St. Basil the Great mentions how “faith is perfected through baptism, and baptism is grounded on faith . . . First comes the confession [of faith], introducing us to salvation, and baptism follows, setting the seal on our assent” (see The Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church §417). There is an interplay between God grace and the act of our free will in the exercise of our faith. Let us pray that we may grow in faith, a faith not in a law but in the living person of Jesus Christ.