The benefit of being chosen by God should motivate us to gratitude and to practice virtue
3 min • Digitized on March 31, 2022
From The Sinner’s Guide, page 70
By Venerable Louis of Granada
CHAPTER VI.
THE SIXTH MOTIVE WHICH OBLIGES US TO PRACTISE VIRTUE: THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE BENEFIT OF ELECTION.
To all the benefits which we have just enumerated we must add that of election, or predestination, which belongs to those whom God has chosen from all eternity to be partakers of His glory.
The Apostle, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, thus gives thanks, in his own name and that of the elect, for this inestimable benefit: “Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, in Christ; as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight, in charity; Who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the purpose of His will.” The Royal Prophet thus extols this same benefit: “Blessed is he whom Thou hast chosen and taken to Thee; he shall dwell in Thy courts.”
Election, therefore, may be justly called the grace of graces, since God, in His boundless liberality, bestows it upon us before we have merited it; for, while giving to each one what is necessary for his salvation, He wills, as absolute master of His gifts, to bestow them in greater abundance upon certain souls, without any injury, however, to others less favored.
It is also the grace of graces not only because it is the greatest, but because it is the source of all the others. For in predestining man to glory God determines to bestow upon him all the graces necessary to attain this happiness. This He has declared by the mouth of His prophet: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee.”
This truth is still more clearly expressed by the Apostle: “For whom He foreknew He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. And whom He predestinated, them also He called. And whom He called, them also He justified. And whom He justified, them also He glorified.”
A father who destines his son for a special career in life prepares and educates him from his boyhood with a view to this career. In like manner, when God has predestined a soul to eternal happiness He directs her in the path of justice, that she may attain the end for which He has chosen her.
All, therefore, who recognize in themselves any mark of election should bless God for this great and eternal benefit. Though it is a secret hidden from human eyes, yet there are certain signs of election, as there are of justification; and as the first mark of our justification is the conversion of our lives, so the surest mark of our predestination is our perseverance in the good thus begun. He who has lived for a number of years in the fear of God, carefully avoiding sin, may hope that God, in the words of the Apostle, “will confirm him unto the end without crime, in the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”