“You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22)

This Sunday’s Gospel reading is an account of the revelation of the divinity of Christ after His baptism by John the Baptist, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’” (Luke 3:22).

It takes faith for Christians to believe in the divinity of Christ. It is not through our own merits that we have the gift of faith, “Your faith might be a matter, not of human wisdom, but of God’s power” (1 Cor 2:5). It is by His revelation that the invisible God, from the fullness of His love, invites and receives us in his own company. Faith is our response to God’s invitation when we completely submit our intellect and our will to Him (Ref. CCC 142 and 143).

Each one of us has a different story about our own faith and conversion. We may be fortu-nate to know God through faithful and loving parents, a gentle and righteous teacher in school or a holy and compassionate priest in church. We may be in search of God and indeed find Him and the meaning of our being. We may encounter God when we receive a spectacular or even miraculous grace to render us relief from a terrible suffering. Or we may simply encounter God through the beauty and wonder of nature, the living things on earth, the stars in the sky and the timeless universe. Or we may be amazed by the synchronization and order in our own physical self from the cellular level to the bodily functions, in the mother earth where we live and the universe that we are part of, pointing us to an omnipotent Creator, the almighty Triune God.

We are truly blessed to have the gift of faith. Let us follow St. Paul’s advice, strive to be transformed by faith to “renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and godly” and make it our goal in life that God will also be well pleased in us His adopted children (Second reading Titus 2:12).