Called To Become In Faith The Saints We Are Baptized To Be

Second Sunday Integral 2026

Saint Paul writes to one of his troublesome churches in Corinth today and reminds them of God’s desire for them and all of us. He always teaches something in his introductory paragraphs. The communication is addressed to those “who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are made saints in our baptism when we profess our faith and are purified from original sin. But that’s just a start. Our moral lives are still injured by our passions. Do you always do what you should?

None of us always do what we know we should do. But we are called to be holy, to become more holy through a life of obedience through faith. We must grow to live a holy life, one of right praise through worship and of right living by following the twin commandments: love God above everything and love our neighbor as ourselves.

How is that possible to us who even after Baptism are still burdened with the effects of original sin? The answer is that it’s not possible unless we are empowered to do so by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. This is the gift of the Father and Jesus, the divine gift who is sacramentally infused into every Christian. Jesus’s baptism began that gift-giving for all His followers.

John the evangelist wrote about this probably three or four decades, or more, after Christ’s baptism. He had personally heard John the Baptist testify that he “saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven and remain with [Jesus].” A good Jew would make a connection there. Those last words evoke a memory stretching all the way back to the judgeship of Samuel. When the Hebrew people, tired of Philistine attacks and domination, demanded Samuel find them a fighting king, he chose Saul of the tribe of Benjamin.

The story is recorded in the first book of Samuel, chapters 9 and 10. The Spirit of God came on Saul after he was anointed by Samuel. But we do not read that the Spirit remained with him, and not too long after early victories, Scripture tells us that the Lord’s Spirit left him. An evil spirit then caused him much trouble. Providentially, David was recruited to play the harp for King Saul to calm him.

Later, God told Samuel that He had rejected Saul, and he sent the prophet to Bethlehem to meet the chosen replacement. That was David. David “was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. And the Lord said, ‘Arise, anoint him; for this is he.’ Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.” The Spirit remained on David for the rest of his life, even when he had sinned with Bathsheba and Uriah. King David became the model king of Israel, and the Messiah was prophesied to be the Son of David. When Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem on His final Passover journey, only then did He allow crowds to declare Him to be the Messiah. How did they do that? They called Jesus the “Son of David.”

But Jesus came with an extra quality, well beyond the mission of King David. He anointed His apostles with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and they were empowered sacramentally to bestow the Holy Spirit on others. That spread for the past two thousand years so that the Church now exists, with few exceptions, in every part of the world. The holiness preached by St. Paul can be diffused to every nation and every person who professes faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The twin Law of Christ, to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves, can take root in every heart, as David declared in today’s psalm. All of us can say that our delight is to do our God’s will because of that heart-felt, wondrous Law. All of us can announce the justice brought by Christ in the vast assembly, starting here in this community with our faith-filled testimony.

We are called to be saints. With our cooperation, the Holy Spirit can make it happen through our obedience of faith.