Yesterday's Second Reading, Ephesians 1:3-14, deserves some attention, particularly for its pro-life relevance. 

The text is actually a hymn that may have preexisted St. Paul’s epistle and which he incorporated into it. Priests and others familiar with the Liturgy of the Hours know this text because it regularly appears among the hymns in Evening Prayer.

But how is it a pro-life text?

This hymn is a celebration of creation. It’s not a celebration of the kind in vogue today, e.g., a paean to “Gaia” or “Mother Nature.” No, it is a celebration of the doctrine of creation, that what exists comes from the hand of God, is intended by God, and is good. Judaism and Christianity — in contrast to the religions of Antiquity — recognize that God is Creator and Redeemer, celebrating him both for the work of creation and his concrete deeds in salvation history. If you want proof, read Psalm 136. It first (vv. 4-9) celebrates God’s work in creation, enumerating particular acts because “his love endures forever.” Then, with the same refrain, it details (vv. 10-22) God’s works in forging a people for himself, starting with the Exodus. It concludes with God’s care for the individual person praying the Psalm (vv. 23-26). 

Now, the Ephesians hymn is very Christocentric. Creation isn’t just a “nice thing” God decided to do before declaring “it was good.” No, God created to bring us into relationship with him, so that, when creation reaches its perfection, it will be when all things are “summed up in Christ.” The centerpiece of creation is the person.

That person-centric focus of creation is vital because it is a radical corrective to today’s mindset. Creation does not exist so that it can have an optimal temperature not exacerbated by carbon emissions. Creation does not exist for a pristine planet of fungi, babbling brooks, and a few cavemen human beings whose “carbon footprint” has been mitigated by an attempted return to the Stone Age. Creation exists for persons … and that is just what Ephesians 1 says.

God’s creation, culminating in the human person, occurs so that he could have a relationship with his Creator, “for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ.” 

But how is this connected to a pro-life perspective? 

The hymn makes it clear: God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” God chose us before we existed, before our parents existed, before our ancestors to the X-power existed, before the world existed.

God is eternal. That doesn’t mean God just happens to be around for a very long time, slogging through history from the Big Bang to the Last Day. No. That God is eternal means that all time — what we call “past,” “present” and “future” — exists before him. For God, all of “history” is now. The woman adorned in Lascaux-era jewelry, the Pharoah in his mummy, Christopher Columbus, you and I, and perhaps someday the first human being to reach the Andromeda Galaxy, are all immediately present to God. So, when God created “in the beginning,” every human being that would ever exist was already in the mind of God. God knew us before the foundation of the world. More importantly, he “chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” He called us, every one of us, not just “before I formed you in the womb” (Jeremiah’s “cramped” timeframe, see 1:5) but before he formed anything. And my place in freedom in that plan was there “in all my days … before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:16). 

Our faith should teach us that no life is “unplanned.” God has a plan for every child who enters this world, even if his parents might not. And God’s plan trumps — or at least should trump — theirs.

One further reflection: God “chose us in him before the world began ….” Note those two italicized words. God does not “choose” us as isolated monads, created to be indifferent towards God, an isolated individual that could legitimately choose to stay that way or connect to God. Freedom is not anodyne neutrality that makes God a “take-him-or-leave-him” choice, equally valid outcomes for man. No, God chose us in relationship, “in him,” which means man is not truly himself except apart from love, from being in relation to another. As St. John Paul II reminded us in Redemptor hominis: “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself” absent that relationship.

Last week, the Gospel told us that Jesus could not perform very many miracles in Nazareth because “so great was their lack of faith.” That truth applies here. Do we believe that God has a plan for every human being? Do we really have faith that no person’s life is “unplanned?” Do we truly have faith in Providence — that God has a design and purpose for what he does — or is it just a nice and comforting thought to which we pay occasional lip service when we have nothing better to say but, in our heart of hearts, really don’t take seriously? And, when we don’t take it seriously, do we not then decide to rely on our own hands and plans instead of God’s?