He Chose Me to Be

He Chose Me to Be by Mother Angelica

"Your body, you know, is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you since you received Him from God. You are not your own property; you have been bought and paid for. That is why you should use your body for the glory of God. (1 Cor. 6:19) We have a tendency to think our body is our own and we can do as we please with it. But this is not so. We were created by God—created as weak human beings—part animal, part spiritual. Our dignity as human beings was degraded by pride and rebellion in the beginning by our first parents Adam and Eve and then by our own wrong choices. God's love for us devised a way to raise us above our degradation—above our own nature, and set us apart as beings He could rightfully call "sons." He sent His own Son to take our flesh upon Himself—live and die as one of us and then rise from the dead so we would be delivered from our slavery to sin. What a price was paid for one so fragile in nature, so vacillating in will, so prone to evil. The Great King looks for a peasant to raise up to the dignity of a Prince. Each one of us is a kind of Cinderella, who is beckoned by the King to live a new life. The choice is ours, but the prize is His—He has already a right to everything we are, everything we possess. He has only good to give us. Why do we so often prefer what harms us? Is the right to choose good and evil more precious to us than peace, happiness and joy? Would we rather be miserable and misuse our freedom to choose rather than be humble and admit God Knows what is best for us? What price He paid to save us and what price we pay when we do our own will? No, we do not have a right to do as we please with our life or anyone else's. Our life belongs to God and that God is powerful enough to maintain it, good enough to sustain it and provident enough to care for all its needs.