I have tried to stress in this article that our call from God, through life, is to become a person who clearly sees the meaning and purpose of life. Have you ever thought about why you are alive and why you are the person that you are? I am firmly convinced that we have to deal with the issue of why we are the persons that we are. I am firmly also convinced that God needs us to be who we are so that, at this moment, His creation is complete. We exit this world when we no longer are needed to complete God’s creation.

Of course this all requires that we think in a certain manner. Do you really believe that God has a plan for His creation, which includes us? Do you really feel, know and believe that God, from all eternity, conceived of you as you are and that He, through life, knows that the right combination of strengths and weakness which are yours, is the exact combination needed to help you grow in your likeness of God as seen in the Person of Jesus?

I truly believe that FAITH requires us to think in this fashion. If we believe in God and believe that He is loving, we must believe that He didn’t just have us come into existence without some sort of idea/plan

of how to give us the opportunities we need to fulfill the purpose of life. We also believe, however, that while He has a plan in mind for us, He doesn’t force His plan on us. Why? Because He gave us free will and He wants us to freely choose the way we want to respond to the meaning and purpose of life. This is how a loving Father behaves. A true Father never forces His will on us but, rather, only calls us to respond to His loving offerings to transform our lives.

The call to holiness, therefore, is God’s call, through life, to make sense out of this earthly experience and to choose how we want to live it. He has told us of His love through Jesus and only hopes, for our sakes, that we choose a path that will lead us to greater union with Him.

Salvation is an interactive process between God and us. He honors and respects our free-will actions. Why? Because He gave us free will and only desires our voluntary return of His love, like any good father.