AUDIENCE: GOD IS LOVE AND HAS DESTINED US TO BE HIS CHILDREN

VATICAN CITY, JUL 6, 2005 (VIS) - In today's general audience, held in St. Peter's Square, the Holy Father spoke on the canticle in St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians (1, 3-14), "God the Savior."

  The Pope told the 15,000 people present that this hymn "is a prayer of blessing addressed to God the Father" that outlines "the various stages of the plan of salvation achieved through the action of Christ."

  Benedict XVI went on: "The Father first chooses us that we might walk holy and blameless in love, then destines us to be His children; He also redeems us and forgives our sins, and makes the mystery of salvation in Christ fully known to us; finally He gives us the eternal inheritance, offering us a guarantee in the gift of the Holy Spirit until the final resurrection."

  Among the successive divine gestures of the hymn is that of "choosing the believers, a free and gratuitous initiative of God. In principle, then, 'before the foundation of the world,' in the eternity of God, divine grace was ready to enter into action. The content of this call is 'sanctity,' in other words participation in the transcendent purity of the divine Being and in His intimate essence of 'charity,' 'God is love'."

  "Following this course, we move towards the next stage, which has also been contemplated in the divine plan for all eternity: our 'predestination' as children of God. Elsewhere in his writings, St. Paul exalts this sublime condition of being children, which implies brotherhood with Christ - the Son par excellence, 'first-born among many brothers' - and intimacy with the heavenly Father - Who can now be invoked as 'Abba,' Father, in a spontaneous and loving relationship."

  The Pope concluded by referring to St. Ambrose, who wrote that God is above all rich in mercy because in Christ "He redeemed everyone and, as architect of nature, transformed us who by the nature of flesh were children of rage and subject to punishment, that we should be children of peace and of charity."
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