Word of the Week

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Predestine: Proorizo (Gk.): meaning “determine before”, “ordain”, or “predestinate”

Before the dawn of Creation, God the Father freely communicated his “plan of loving kindness” to the entire world. Through the “Spirit of Sonship”, a divine adoption by grace, God ordained man "to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom.8:29); a gift given to us in Christ Jesus that man would continue the work of the Trinity in the mission of the Church (CCC, 257, cf. 2823). In his “eternal plan of ‘predestination’, he includes in it each person's free response to his grace” (CCC, 600). Moreover, it is important to note that no one is predetermined to eternal damnation (CCC 1037).

Predestination can be found in the New Testament six times. In one case, it speaks to the hidden wisdom of God that decreed all things to come to their fulfillment according to his eternal design (1 Cor.2:7; Eph.1:11); even to the extent of allowing man’s corruption to work in his eternal design (cf. Acts 4:28). In essence, God writes straight with crooked lines, as Paul once stated, “where sin arises, grace abounds all the more” (Rom.5:20). In the second case, it speaks more directly to the fore-ordained decree given by God that man would live in the divine nature of God (2 Pet. 1:4) so as to give glory to God (Rom.8:29-30; Eph.1:5).

This Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we are called to examine the essence of the gift of predestination that has been given to us, the gift of divine sonship. This ‘ordination’ of God to live in the warmth of his presence is a not a call to slip into a moral laxity, rather, a call to exercise our spiritual freedom with acts of righteousness and holiness. To reaffirm the words of Peter, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness…be the more zealous to confirm you election” (2 Pet.3-10) (Hahn and Minch, 37).

 

“He did not predestine before He foreknew, but for those whose merits He foresaw, He predestined the reward.”

--St. Ambrose

Primary Texts Consulted

1. Catholic Bible. Suggested trans. Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, 1997.
3. Hahn, Scott and Minch, Curtis. Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The letters of St. Paul to the Galatians & Ephesians, RSV, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005.

 

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