Readings from Scripture:
Genesis 1:26-31
1 John 4: 11-16
John 14: 23-29
Summer, 2002, and I have the joy of being with over a million young people
from around the globe, and with Pope John Paul II, at World Youth Day in
Toronto.
These World Youth Days are glorious events, filled with prayer, song,
religious formation, sharing of faith, the Eucharist, the sacrament of
penance, a lot of just plain fun . . . and, of course, the presence of the
Pope.
It’s the last full day, and, as other bishops, I gather at a parish church
in suburban Toronto with about four hundred young people from
English-speaking countries, to give my teaching. We bishops were encouraged
to then “open-the-floor” and allow any of our young people to give public
testimony about any graces they may have received during the World Youth
Days. After a pause, a young woman from the back-corner approaches the
microphone.
“World Youth Day saved my life,” she begins. She sure has our attention. “I
am twenty-four years old, and have been living on the streets since I was
fifteen. I’ve become an alcoholic, and a heroin addict” -- here she rolls up
the sleeves of her blouse to reveal bruises and scabs from the needles --
“and a prostitute to support my habit. I’m dying, and I was about ready to
end it all.
The kids from my parish youth group, who have always been nice to me, took
me in and cleaned me up, and invited me to come to Toronto with them for
World Youth Day.
And here I’ve met an old man who has changed my life. This old man told me
he loved me. Oh, a lot of old men tell me they love me, for fifteen minutes.
This old man meant it. He told me God loved me, and that I’m actually God’s
work of art. He told me that the God who made all the stars actually knows
my name. He told me God enjoys me so much He wants me to spend eternity with
Him, and that He sent His Son, Jesus, to help me get there. This old man
told me I actually share God’s own life deep inside of me. This old man
makes sense. This old man got through to me. I now want to live.”
The “old man” of course, was the Venerable Servant of God, John Paul the
Great.
Ideas have consequences, don’t they? Convictions have corollaries. And God’s
Word today, from Genesis and St. John, enchants us with one of the most
profound ideas, one of the most noble convictions, of all: that we are made
in God’s image and likeness, that God actually abides in us, and we in Him,
that deep in our being is the very breath of the divine.
I suggest that anyone who thinks this grand idea, this conviction, this
doctrine, to be of no consequence might get in touch with that young woman
from Toronto.
This stunning belief -- that we actually hold in our heart the spark of the
divine -- while dramatic in Jewish and Christian revelation, is also part of
other great world creeds.
As a matter of fact, this gripping conviction, while explicit in revealed
religion, is really evident in the very nature of man. So we have the
towering intellects of civilization, philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle,
Seneca and Cicero, themselves unaware of the God of
Abraham, the Father of Jesus, still write convincingly that human beings
hold within them the light of eternity, a destiny beyond this life, a
supernatural brand-mark, an exalted identity which elevates them
qualitatively above the rest of creation. True, they never viewed
Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, depicting creation, but they would sure nod
in agreement at the inspired words of Genesis in this morning’s first
Scripture reading,
“God
created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created man,
male and female He created them . . . and God saw that this was good.”
And they would beam at the chant of the psalmist,
“What is man that you should spare even a thought for him,
the son of Man that you should care for him?
Yet, you have made him little less than a god,
You have crowned him with glory and splendor.”
This noble tenet -- that human nature reflects God’s own nature, that God
looks at us and smiles with delight, that a human being shares in God’s own
life and is destined for eternity--this soaring conviction which resonates
in the human heart, that was made explicit in God’s Word, which animated the
thinking of our most normative philosophers, and is a constant of
Judeo-Christian humanism, this grand idea has particularly cogent
consequences for the Republic we call home, for the country we love.
We citizens of the United States of America are so gratefully and humbly
aware that our country was founded on this very conviction, that part of our
birthright, as Ronald Reagan would often quote John Winthrop, is “to be a
city set on a hill,” where respect for the pinnacle of God’s creation, the
human being, would be the premier characteristic.
Without arrogance, but with more a sense of challenge, John Adams would
write, “I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and
wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence,” or, as he
penned on the eve of the revolution, “Let us see delineated before us the
true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank
he holds among the works of God.”
Yes, our second president expressed it well: “The true map of man,” a map
engraved in human reason and natural law, a map showing the terrain of a
person reflecting the divine, hosting the indwelling of God, possessing by
his very nature certain rights our Declaration of Independence calls
inalienable, a map whose paths can only be walked with a reverence for life,
a respect for others, a grasp of virtue, and a responsible civility. It is a
cherished part of our American heritage, then, to rejoice in a mutually
enriching alliance between religion, morality, and democracy, since, as de
Tocqueville observed, “Respect for the laws of God and
man is the best way of remaining free, and liberty is the best means of
remaining upright and religious.” No wonder the bishops of the Catholic
Church of the United States, meeting in council in Baltimore in 1884, could
write, “We consider the establishment of our nation, the shaping of its
liberties and laws, as a work of special Providence, its framers building
better than they knew, the Almighty’s hand guiding them.”
Listen to what Pope John Paul II had to say about this American experiment,
establishing a Republic based upon support for the human rights innate in
one made in God’s image and likeness:
The Founding Fathers of the United States asserted their claim to freedom
and independence on the basis of certain “self-evident” truths about the
human person, truths which could be discerned in human nature built into it
by “nature’s God.” Thus they meant to bring into being . . . a great
experiment in what George Washington called “ordered liberty.”
. . . The continuing success of American democracy depends on the degree to
which each new generation . . . makes its own the moral truths on which the
Founding Fathers staked the future of your Republic.
Yes, “ideas have consequences,” and perhaps a way to view our participation
in this annual Red Mass in our nation’s capital is as our humble prayer for
the red-hot fire of the Holy Spirit, bringing the jurists, legislators, and
executives of our government the wisdom to recognize that we are indeed made
in God’s image, that deep in our being is the life of God, and then to give
them the courage to judge, legislate, and administer based on the
consequences of that conviction: the innate dignity and inviolability of
every human life, and the cultivation of a society of virtue to support that
belief.
As I say to young people being confirmed, think how differently you would
treat yourselves -- always with dignity and respect -- if you believed you
were a vessel of the divine, and think how you would treat others if you
held that they were, too.
That’s the grand American project: to live out the consequences of such an
exalted Judeo-Christian humanism. As Emerson suggested, “Let not man so much
guard his dignity, as let his dignity guide him.”
So this soaring idea has consequences, and has throughout our history: in
the quest for independence itself, in the formation of a Republic, in
abolition and civil rights, in the waging of war and promotion of peace, in
care for the other, in the strengthening of marriage and family, and in the
promotion of a culture of life.
Maybe we’re here because we realistically acknowledge that, in a world where
we’re tempted to act like animals instead of like God’s icon, in a culture
where life itself can be treated as a commodity, seen as a means to an end,
or as an inconvenience when tiny or infirm, in a society where rights are
reduced to whatever we have the urge to do instead of what we ought to do in
a civil society, we need all the wisdom and fortitude God can give us, as
civic leaders, magistrates, as ordinary citizens, to achieve, as Cardinal
James Gibbons exhorted, “liberty without license, authority without
despotism.”
Our prayer this morning is then not all that different from the one John
Carroll, our first bishop, wrote for Catholic American’s to pray for their
civil leaders:
We pray Thee, O almighty and eternal God! Who through Jesus Christ hast
revealed Thy glory to all nations . . .
We pray Thee, O God of might, wisdom, and justice! Through Whom authority is
rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgment decreed, assist with
Thy holy spirit of counsel and fortitude the President of the United States,
that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be eminently
useful to Thy people over whom he presides; by encouraging due respect for
virtue and religion; by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and
mercy; and by restraining vice and immorality. Let the light of
Thy divine wisdom direct the deliberations of Congress, and shine forth in
all the proceedings and laws framed for our rule and government, so that
they may tend to the preservation of peace, the promotion of national
happiness, the increase of industry, sobriety, and useful knowledge; and may
perpetuate to us the blessing of equal liberty.
We pray for all judges, magistrates, and other officers who are appointed to
guard our political welfare, that they maybe enabled, by Thy powerful
protection, to discharge the duties of their respective stations with
honesty and ability.
We recommend likewise, to Thy unbounded mercy, all our brethren and fellow
citizens throughout the United States, that they may be blessed in the
knowledge and sanctified in the observance of Thy most holy law; that they
may be preserved in union, and in
that peace which the world can not give; and after enjoying the blessings of
this life, be admitted to those which are eternal. Through Christ, Our Lord.
Amen