Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Who am I? Delving into the mystery of our lives, everyone searches for meaning and purpose. For most, identity comes from what we do. Our employment identifies, or a hobby, or activity. For some, a tragedy or a trauma defines them. Sadly, these two intensify our self-perception creating a distorted even debased identity. Others who have sinned gravely also identify themselves as reprobates, unpardonable.
Yet, we are not the sum total of our sins, nor the sum total of others who have abused or abandoned us. We are not the sum total of our income, employment, hobby, or activity. We are not the sum total of what others think. We are the sum total of Our Father’s love. God defines us. He gives us his identity. He made us and makes us. Never do we allow others to define us, no matter how important or significant. Nor do I define myself for I am too blind to see how wonderfully made I am. God alone identifies me for He is my Father, and as Father, He gives me my identity since He is the One Who loved me into being.
Defining ourselves is an impossibility. Sadly, our divine identification is lost because our society has lost the sense of God. No longer do we believe that Divine Providence directs our world. Yet it does.
Today, self-determination: I identify who I want to be, replaces Divine Providence. This self-determination seeks self-deification. This new age theology inspires many. I decide who I am. This secular anthropology: the study of many and the origin of our species, reduces the value and dignity of the human person to functionality. Productivity determines human value. This anthropology is utilitarianism. My value comes from my doing, not my being. This anthropology roots itself in evolution, that the strongest and smartest survive. Being strong and smart, I evolve into whom I want to be. It is pure egoism, auto-salvation.
The strong and smart do not necessarily survive. One must develop, use, and apply smartness and strength properly for them to be advantageous. Otherwise, they are dangerous. Smart and strong can make us fools rushing into destruction and death. In reality, the wise survive. They have wisdom and wisdom does not necessarily need strength or smartness. Hence, wisdom trumps smartness and strength because it discerns how to use our abilities. As Scripture declares, Wisdom orders all things sweetly and correctly (Wis 8:1).
Though free to exercise self-determination, a Christian Anthropology: God creates wisely, contrasts the utilitarian and evolutionary one. The Christian Anthropology declares with the Psalmist:
You formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are your works (Ps 139:13–14).
More important than doing, being created by God gives me an innate divine identity. My very being has value: I am created good. It matters not whether I evolve or produce, nor if I am the smartest and strongest. What matters comes from my Creator Who designed me to be wonderfully and beautifully made.
Yet, our society perverts this Christian Anthropology judging others according to some human standard: attractiveness, intelligence, abilities: athleticism, singing, acting, or a host of standards reduced to a function and evolution. How fair is this standard. Human standards objectifies our value, equating us to machines denying we are subjects with feelings, emotions, desires, and most of all a person created in the image and likeness of God. I value my life for it comes from God. I don’t evolve but involve God and his divinity into my life. Being a person with divine dignity, I value love. This defines me.
The contrast is clear. God’s ways are not our ways, and our ways are not God’s. God reads our hearts and loves whether we can and cannot do. He does not judge us on our abilities, but on our willingness to enter and embrace his Love.
Others merely read our abilities and look at our achievements to determine our value. How sad! We reduce a person to a player who has some type of skill or talent: he is usable, rather than see the innate dignity of his very person and value his presence.
Knowing our hearts, the Father invites us to live with and for Him. This is our identity. We enter the Vineyard of the Kingdom and in the Vineyard, we know we are loved. It is not what we do that matters, but the love with which we do it. Love increases our being, because our value is not doing, participating in the Divine Love that created us. The more we participate, the more we realize our value. Even more astounding, our ability to receive love as a gift increases. In turn, our ability to give love also increases. Love, receiving and giving, defines us.
Knowing we are loved with an everlasting love fulfills our being. True love, however, has conditions: It needs to be received and respected. It needs to be returned and gifted. This is the essence of Divine Love.
Love makes the world go round, literally. God constantly breathes forth his love empowering all of creation to thrive. His love beautifies the whole of creation, including ourselves. His love defines us and by the power of his love, we do his will. We work out our salvation through fear and trembling, reverence and awe (Phil 2:12-13). Love then trumps strength and smartness because love does not evolve but involves another loving him freely and willingly.
God’s love breaks us of a false sense of who I am. I am not defined by my sinfulness, nor by an abuser. I am not defined by my actions or anyone or anything other than my Father’s love who adopted me to live in his kingdom. St. Paul encapsulates this teaching when he writes:
He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved (Eph 1:5–6).
Adopted into divine life and affirmed by God’s love, our love wants to do what the Father wills, affirming our identity. His will invites us into the Vineyard serving out of love. This service—self-emptying of our broken hearts so He may give us a new heart—suffers willingly. Love embraces our sufferings to bring out the goodness in the other and in ourselves. This is kenosis.
Kenosis, the self-emptying of our hearts to conform to the heart of the Father, imitates Jesus. St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians, unveils for us the three-fold mystery of the Father’s love: Christus Natus, Christus Eucharisticus, Christus Mysticus. He writes:
Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name (Php 2:6–9).
Inviting us into his kingdom, Christ humbles Himself being born in our likeness. This is Christus Natus: Christ is born. He takes our human nature upon Himself because our human nature has fallen from grace. We are deprived of divine life. We are not stained with sin but lack wholeness of God’s life. We lost our divine identity: the Father’s children. His incarnation: Christus Natus, does not incur the loss of divine life, because Christ, fully man, is fully God. As God, his love restores our fallen natrue . He takes what is missing and fills us with his real presence. What we lost by sin, He is going to restore and make us.
His real presence comes in the Eucharist: Christus Eucharisticus. Through the Eucharist, He fills us with his presence making us whole, full of grace. Wholeness comes from his humbleness. Christ, humbling himself, even dying on the cross. His death displays the depth of his love, and his love restores us to divine life. Through the Eucharist, His body and blood, his life and love, pours out upon us then into us to restore what we lack. No longer deprived of divine life, the Eucharist fills us restoring our divine identity.
St. John ensures this truth when he quotes Jesus stating those who eat his and drink his blood have divine life within. Those who do not eat his body or drink his blood, do not have divine life within. They lack what Christ came to give: Himself through the Eucharist.
Partaking in the life and love of Christ, the Eucharist, we enter and belong to his Kingdom. No longer do we suffer from a false identity, we have the divine identity infused within our souls. We acknowledge our image and likeness is of God, Who is love. This is the Christus Mysticus. We share in the divine life, mystically becoming One in being with the Trinity through love.
In his encyclical letter, Pope Pius XII explains the reason for this mystical union between Christ and us who partake in his body:
We may distinguish the Body of the Church, which is a Society whose Head and Ruler is Christ, from His physical Body, which, born of the Virgin Mother of God, now sits at the right hand of the Father and is hidden under the Eucharistic veils (Pius XII Mystici Corporis Christi, # 60).
Through the Eucharist, we become one body with Christ. We share the same mind, body, heart, and soul with Christ. Or as St. Paul explains, “For me to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21). This is the mystical union—deification—we so desire.
Invited into the Vineyard, we work because God works in us. He takes what is sinful and makes us clean. He takes what is wounded and makes us whole. He takes what He gave us: gifts and graces, so we may use them for his Kingdom. "Our Head," as St. Augustine says, "intercedes for us: some members He is receiving, others He is chastising, others cleansing, others consoling, others creating, others calling, others recalling, others correcting, others renewing."[113] But it is for us to cooperate with Christ in this work of salvation, "from one and through one saved and saviors."[114](Pius XII Mystici Corporis Christi, #59).
Like the reluctant son, we go into the Vineyard hearing the call, Come Follow Me! Following Christ, our work does what the Spirit inspires. We no longer cringe feeling unworthy but know our identity: Beloved of the Father. Our hearts, empty of that pride that drives us away from the Kingdom, now we belong fully to Christ.