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Did it sound like Pope Francis changed everything when the mainstream media reported about the documentary, Francesco? It did to me. I'm still wrestling with it, but to wrestle with it better, I'm trying, over the next five weeks to answer five fundamental questions about the human person and human sexuality. The five answers will remind us of the direction that interpretation of Pope Francis's words must take.
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\\nThe following is the full text of the homily:
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\\nIf you follow the news at all, you might have heard that the mainstream media reported that Pope Francis has broken with many long-established traditions in the Church. Reporting like this happens all the time. I won\\u2019t pretend to understand why, but I\\u2019ll share that my best and most charitable guess is that so many people, Catholics included, misunderstand a great deal about what the Church actually believes and teaches. This misunderstanding happens, in part, because Church teaching is vast and complicated because God is even more vast and even more complicated. It would be impossible to answer entirely the questions and concerns raised by this most recent misreporting by the media in one homily. It would be impossible to answer entirely in all the homilies remaining in my, hopefully, long life left.
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I am, however, going to endeavour to answer some key questions about what the Church teaches about the human person and human sexuality over the next five weeks. These homilies will build upon one another in a way that I have not done before. But we have the privilege that right now, if you miss one, you can view it throughout the week before your next attendance at Mass because we are livestreaming the Parish Mass every weekend. I encourage everyone to wrestle with these homilies and wrestle with how you live and model the teachings in your own life, for this is our call as Christians: to wrestle with God as Jacob did, and as it is depicted in the great-stained-glass image in the back of our Church\\u2014to wrestle with God always as He changes our lives.
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The first Church teaching I am going to address, and question that I am going to answer is \\u201cwho is the human person?\\u201d
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To answer, it is telling to share with you that as I was making my plan for the next five weeks, I first wrote \\u201cwhat is the human person?\\u201d The distinction between who and what is crucial because who refers to a person and what refers to an object. The human person is, unsurprisingly, a person; that is to say, the human person is not an object. The human person is the greatest creation of God; angels are more powerful, but the human person is greater; animals, plants, computers, and books are good; all of these are good, but the human person is better. Each and every one of us is individually created by God. The whole universe was created by God, but the human person is the greatest creation. Creation by God doesn\\u2019t mean that Genesis has to be taken literally, but as Catholics we believe that there are profound truths about God and the human person revealed in every page, and indeed every word, of Sacred Scripture\\u2014the Bible.
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One truth revealed about the human person is that we are created body and soul\\u2014not one part of the human person carrying around the other, but a unity between the two. Another truth is that at our creation, we were made perfect, but as one of my favourite poets describes it, we were created \\u201csufficient to stand, though free to fall.\\u201d We are fallen\\u2014that is to say, broken and hurt by sin. But the story of the human person does not end there because we are also redeemed by Jesus Christ\\u2019s death on the Cross and His resurrection from the dead three days later. Our brokenness is an important truth, but that we have been put back together again by God is even more important.
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The human person and his or her relationship with God is the focus of today\\u2019s readings. In our first reading from the Book of Exodus, the greatness of the human person is shown by the dignity God demands we give to those who are different form us. We give respect and love to all human people because they are created and loved by God, the greatest and most loved of His creations; we also give respect and love to all human people to show others who don\\u2019t know this crucial truth that we know it, and that they can learn it too. That\\u2019s what St Paul means in his First Letter to the Thessalonians when he says that he and those he travelled with became \\u201can example to all believers.\\u201d
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The Gospel spells out this crucial point clearly and deeply when Jesus gives the two greatest commandments\\u2014\\u201clove your God with all you heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbour as yourself.\\u201d With these words, Jesus makes it clear that loving God requires loving His creation. With these words, Jesus says that loving God is loving people, and one of the simplest logical truths in the universe\\xa0 is that if A equals B, then B also equals A. That is to say, loving God is the action of loving people, and loving people is the action of loving God.
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The great relationship between humanity and God is modelled for us not only in the words of Jesus, but in His very identity. Jesus is God made man, man who is God. In His human life, Jesus not only lives as a human, but he accomplishes redemption, that is the possibility of us all to resurrect and live in heaven, for all human people\\u2014before, during, and after His human life. This redemption includes us, and it also includes those who disagree with us; this redemption includes us, and every person ever in our family line in the past, present, and future. Redemption includes blacks, whites, indigenous, males, females, abled, disabled, gays, straights, and everything and everyone in between.
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Jesus is the Son of God, and we also believe as Catholics that God is three persons in one God\\u2014Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe that the Father is God, but that the Father is not the Son who is God, and that the Son who is God is not the Holy Spirit who is God. This great paradox is beyond the range of human reason, and it requires that we have faith to wrestle with it, which is, again, our call as Christians.
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So I call you this week, to wrestle with God, wrestle with His commandments, and to hold in and with love the contradictions, divisions, and paradoxes that are present, and indeed even necessary, in our faith. Love God. Love your brother and sister in Christ, and even through Christ. Love and be loved.
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Who is the human person? The human person is the body and soul that is created, loved, and redeemed by God.