Through Saint Paul's teaching, the homily encourages faith in the one God, rebirth through baptism, and the authentic proclamation of the Gospel in today's world.
Saint Paul, as he wrote in the first reading, was a great fan of Jesus, he loved Him, loved Him, loved Him. And he understood that the Lord Jesus chose him because He wanted to choose him out of grace. He writes about himself: When did Jesus choose me? When I was going to Damascus to capture Christians and put them in prison? When did he choose me? When I was glad they killed Stephen. I deserved it, right? He didn't choose me for my merits, but out of grace. But he also writes that the grace in me was not in vain. I reciprocated the grace with all my strength, my will, my intellect, my person. He chose out of grace, he responded with his whole person, and he went to every part of the world he could to preach the Gospel, the Jesus of all of us. Some of the basic points of our faith, which today's letter describes, were clear to him.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Father, Father of all, God the Father. One Lord, Jesus Christ. Only Him. Only He is the Lord. Only He died on the cross to forgive my sins and your sins, only He. And with the forgiveness of my sins and your sins on the cross, He opened for you, He opened for me the way to God, the way to heaven, only He. Only He was reborn with His own body, and He took us with Him so that we all might revive with our own body. Only He was reborn, only He was reborn. It is I, we did not ask, we did not question, this is how ours are, we did not ask, we did not question. The first teaching of the apostles was this: He died for us, he rises, and he lives. This teaching is the teaching of the true Christian. Only He came from God. God sent only Him among them.
Now Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians those wonderful words. These are the first written sentences of the incarnation of Jesus. When God decided, when God decided, He sent His Son among them, born of a woman, a true man, born under the law, a true Jew, but He came to save us from sins and make us adopted children of God. It is perfect this definition, that it was the definition of God. And with Jesus we all entered into the world of God, a mysterious world, never has anyone seen God, never. We do not know where He is, what He does, and what He is like, never. Only Jesus saw Him because He came from God. He introduced us into the world of God, and with Him we discovered that God is Father. There is only one God who is Father to all of us. There is only one purification. What is purification?
A little water, a few words, I put the water on the head of the child, the head of the little girl. In this gesture, the Holy Spirit embraces that child, that little girl or that adult, and incorporates them into Jesus. I am immersed in Jesus Christ. Is Jesus the Son of God? That child, that little girl, me, 80 years ago, was immersed in Jesus, and I too became an adopted child of God. This is baptism. Jesus is the Son of God, and this little girl, this little girl, me, 80 years ago, was immersed in this world of Jesus Christ, and I was the unity of God. This is the cross. Whoever is immersed in Jesus, all his sins are blotted out, because he is immersed in the Holy, in the true Holy, in Jesus. This is our faith. Now we understand the extremely deep words of the Apostle Paul that describe our faith: One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all.
To proclaim the Gospel to others, I could know Him and live Him. To proclaim the Gospel to others, I must love Jesus, love Him, because He loves me. There is something else, however. To whom do I proclaim the Gospel? The signs of the times mentioned by Jesus in today's Gospel. The signs of the times mean that we see the changes around us, we see them, but we see them well. I must proclaim the Gospel to the people of today, to the men and women of today, as they are, not like those of yesterday, when I was young, nothing changed, behold the signs of the times. I must understand this huge change, not in culture, in mind, and I must tell how to proclaim the Lord, the one God, baptism to today's world. How to do it? There is a wonderful letter from the first century.
Right after the apostles, a letter to Diognetus speaks, which describes who we, Christians, were at that time. There was polytheism in the world, many gods, but still there was one thing that was then and is today. One god said: I have the truth, and this was associated with a morality invented by him. Another god: I have the truth. Everyone had their truth. That is why Pilate asked, when Jesus said to him: I am the truth, that What is truth? In this context. Now I say what they write. We Christians dress like everyone else, we eat like everyone else, we drink like everyone else, we marry like everyone else, we work like everyone else, we pay taxes like everyone else.
Like everyone else, but we are Christians, on the path of the Lord, day and night, small, but we are the seed, your husband is your husband, your wife is your wife, and Jesus is the center for us, He is the center of our life. Behold how the gospel is not. To live with everyone, but with everyone, in today's world, without condemning, without criticizing, without judging. However, to live, to live well. To live well, to be authentic, to be true, even if they do not look at us, and to believe in Jesus Christ, to live Him inside, always better, always better, always better. By presence, the others who see me, who see you, can say: he is a true gentleman, true and Christian. This is what Paul did, among everyone, different peoples, different tribes, with great respect for everyone, he is a Christian. How many saw him and became Christians?
AI translation. This text was made with artificial intelligence from the live broadcast of Radio Mir Medjugorje. It may contain small inaccuracies; the homily as preached in Croatian is authoritative.