Coming to know about a new birth, it is not unusual to hear that another child of God has been born. However, this common expression, though not intentionally erroneous, is nonetheless profoundly imprecise. Who can someone truly call their child? Can this title be given to the son or daughter of one’s neighbor? Or to one’s dog? Or even to a picture that one has painted? In reality, to truly be someone’s son or daughter, it is necessary to have received the parents’ nature. That’s why we call those who have transmitted human life to us our mother and our father. Now, there also is an unsurpassable Father, the Heavenly Father, who wishes to transmit to us a much more elevated and invaluable life – the divine life, for He wants to be able to truly call us His children. This magnificent gift is granted to us by sanctifying grace. But this happens, after the sin of our first parents, not automatically with natural birth… Consequently, at birth we cannot yet say that we are children of God. As Jesus said to Nicodemus: we must be born again! Nothing more excusable than this common theological inexactitude… Excusable, that is, for those who do not have the mission ex officio to teach the Truth… Read further…
