NOTES for Gal 1:15-16
The apostle Paul, of course, speaks first of all about his own calling, but far from only his own. In essence, when calling each person into the Church, God performs the four key actions of which the apostle speaks. First, the Lord chooses each person, and we become unique for Him, one and only and unrepeatable. Tormented by the question of the meaning of our life, it is important for us to remember that God's choosing is already contained in the Creator's design for each of us. Second, the Lord calls every person. He addresses the heart and waits for a response, waits for us to receive Him Himself and His will for us. This calling is a great gift of God's grace. Third, in order that we may be truly alive and bear within ourselves the undistorted image of the Invisible God, the Lord "reveals His Son in us." The apostle refrains from clarifying how this happens; what matters to him is that when a person responds to the calling, he is united in his whole being with the Son of God. What the Fathers of the Church called the deification of the human being takes place. Finally, fourth, the gift of life is given to us so that we may use it as God Himself does. And this first of all means giving life away, bringing to others not ourselves, but the Word of God.
The apostle Paul very vividly contrasts the human and the gracious in service to God. He says that while trying to serve God according to his own human understanding, he "persecuted the Church... being exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers." But when God was pleased, He revealed, that is, made manifest, the presence of the Son of God in him and appointed the apostle to preach Him to the Gentiles. It is no longer Saul of Tarsus himself, but God, who was pleased to choose him for service. He can no longer bring himself and his zeal to people, but the Son of God. He is no longer sent to be zealous for correctness, but to proclaim salvation. This is the choice offered to us Christians who read these words: to be exceedingly zealous for the traditions of the fathers, or to proclaim the Son of God. As the Didache, the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, a monument of Christian writing from the end of the first century, says in its first words: "There are two ways: one of life and one of death."