The Crown of Creation (Fulfillment of All Longing 4)
“No-Bodies”
Yesterday we reflected on the beauty of creation and how it is meant to lead us to the infinite beauty who is God. Today we reflect on the crown of creation which is the human person made in the image of God which is meant to be the most profound revelation of beauty in the world pointing us to God.
Saint Augustine observed that one of the deepest desires of the human heart is to see another and to be seen by that other’s loving look. He was not speaking about seeing another in a superficial way, when we look no further than skin deep. No he was referring to seeing, understanding and loving the person. To see and be seen for Augustine is to love and be loved. But there is a crisis in the modern world that is rooted in a crisis of the person: we don’t know what or who the human person is in the modern world. The crisis of the person is rooted in a crisis of the body. We have ruptured personal identity from bodily identity. There is a rupture between identity and our bodies. There is a word that captures and defines the separation of the body from the soul – death. When we rupture identity from the body we are killing ourselves. We live a world in which the government is demanding in law that we identify everybody without identifying any body. What happens when we identify somebody without reference to his or her body? You identify quite literally no body, nobody! When we separate our identity from the body, we become a culture of “no-bodies” who do not know the value of their own lives or the lives of others.
A Culture of “No-Bodies.”
When we separate our identity from the body, we become a culture of “no-bodies.”
And we end up treating the body as some thing rather than as someone. When we treat the body as some thing rather than some one it wounds us terribly. Because things are dispensable; but persons are indispensable. Things are repeatable; persons are unrepeatable. Things are replaceable; but persons are irreplaceable. Each and every one of you are indispensable, unrepeatable and irreplaceable persons. Ovens are dispensable. When it breaks you throw it away. Just get on Amazon prime, click buy now, they show up with the new one and take the old one to the dump. Human persons cannot be dispensed with, or replaced or repeated. There is no other Teresa the Great in human history. When we stop at the level of body and fail to see the person, we treat persons as if they are dispensable, repeatable and replaceable.
Immortals
(CCC 356) “Endowed with a ‘spiritual and immortal’ soul, the human person is ‘the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake.’ The rest of creation was created for our sake which means we do not violate the nature of a tree when we cut it down to build a house. We can use a tree as a means for our own end. But the human person is the kind of creature that is made for its own sake which means no one has the right to treat you merely as a means to their own end. If his happens we feel used rather than loved. The opposite of love is not hate but to use a person.
C. S. Lewis says “It is a serious thing … to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.” There “are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal … [I]t is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, slight, and exploit…” (C.S. Lewis, WG, p. 45).
Crisis of Love
St. John Paul II reminds us of one of the most important moral laws, which he calls “the personalistic norm,” “in its negative aspect, this law states that the person cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end. In its positive form the personalistic norm confirms this: the person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love” (Karol Wojtyla, LR, p. 41).
The crisis of love is rooted in the crisis of the person, and the crisis of the person is rooted in the crisis of the body because it’s based on a misunderstanding of the human person. Erroneously most people view their body as a shell in which their true spiritual self dwells and when they die they will be liberated from the prison of the body. We are not spirits trapped in a body. We are body-persons; incarnate spirits.
“The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once bodily and spiritual.” By virtue of his spiritual soul man “is most especially in God’s image.” But “the human body [also] shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God.’” For the human person, “though made of body and soul, is a unity.
JPII “The separation of spirit and body in man has led to a growing tendency to consider the human body, not in accordance with the categories of its specific likeness to God, but rather on the basis of its similarity to … bodies which man uses as raw material in his efforts to produce goods for consumption ... When the human body ... comes to be used as raw material ... we will inevitably arrive at a dreadful ethical defeat” (John Paul II, LF 19).
Will We Fight?
What will we do with our freedom? Will we fight for the truth of what a human person is? How shall we fight this battle? We will fight by revealing the meaning of others. We will refuse to treat them as objects. We will treat them as persons with immortal souls. We begin to show others their value by getting to know them, seeking to understand them, finding out their story, be fascinated and interested in them. By your efforts, they will begin to see they have importance, great worth, and dignity.