Third Sunday after Trinity AD 2025

Saint Augustine said something like this: “Everyone loves exaltation, but the only way to ascend there is by the steps of humility.” In today’s Epistle, Saint Peter also exhorts us to humility, because “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”

Recently, a politician, speaking about freedom and independence, rightly said that freedom is not something that can be taken for granted and that independence must be fought for and preserved. Unfortunately, the same politician added something that cannot be considered right: that freedom does not come from anyone’s grace.

Such a view is fundamentally wrong, since everything, absolutely everything, comes from the grace of God. Without it, we would have nothing – we would not even exist. And without God’s grace, we would have no hope for the future, neither in this life nor in eternity.

Humility begins with the realization that everything we are and everything we have is a gift of God’s grace. It is from this same humble recognition that the words of the Declaration of Independence have sprung: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

When we realize that we live by the grace of God alone, it becomes easy for us to cast all our care upon God, knowing that He will exalt us in due time. Then we can know that the God of all grace has “called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus,” to whom “be glory and dominion for ever and ever.”