29th Sunday Reflection: Made In Our Image?
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage – 29th Sunday In Ordinary Time Year A – Made In Our Image – (Matthew 22:15-21)
“Whose image do you see?” asks Jesus. “What is this image called, how is it known?”
The year 2099… on our way and quickly becoming… what will it mean to be human in this distant future that has already begun? Science fiction writers, brainiac think tanks and serious long-term investors are all equally inventive in their beliefs. Science looks at our present-day morphing, extrapolated into the future to give us an image of what we may look like in that future.
Artificial lenses are implanted into the eyes to experience the miracle of 20/20 vision with all the vibrant colours that had slowly faded over many years. Now there are knee replacements. For many of us out there, the list is much longer… hearing aids, dentures, implants, pacemakers, plastic and titanium inserts and gastric balloons with the odd nip and tuck.
In the amazingly short time of a lifespan, this has become the new reality of who we are. At what point will we be classified as no longer original and the warranty void! At what point will we become totally integrated with our smartphones within the web? Billions of dollars are already being spent on property and clothes in the Metaverse.
As we become intoxicated with the idea of remaking ourselves, the image of who we are as humans becomes ever more blurred. We are now plugging ourselves into virtual reality for longer and longer periods. The slick and clever sales pitch, “You can be anything you want”, requires an immersion into an alternative truth that is often as salacious as it is addictive. And so we see the infirm, the sick and the old derided, scorned and cast aside.
Science predicts that at some point in the already but not yet, we will find virtual reality so enticing, that we will choose to remain plugged into the matrix as pure consciousness without bodies. Will we still be human?
“Whose image do you see?” asks Jesus. “What is this image called, how is it known?”
With the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the dynamic metamorphosis of who we are and who we are becoming, traditional relationships are also being discarded as burdensome and irrelevant in a post-modern age.
Post-modernists argue that we no longer live in the modern world with predictable orderly structures, such as the nuclear family. Instead, society has entered a new, chaotic post-modern stage. In post-modern society, family structures are incredibly varied, and individuals have much more freedom of choice in aspects of their lives which would have been unthinkable even 50 years ago.
New technology such as the internet, email and electronic communication have transformed our lives by dissolving barriers of time and space, transforming patterns of work and leisure, and accelerating the pace of change making life less predictable.
“Whose image do you see?” asks Jesus. “What is this image called, how is it known?”
Our railing against this new age, our fear that builds walls between peoples, our distorted love that all too quickly turns to malice behind the mask of piety, all our safe boxes of our dogmas and creeds, cannot, and will not, change this ‘future becoming’. It is already here!
Many of our past assumptions and classifications have caused irreparable hurt and damage to many of our brothers and sisters, to other species and to the world around us. As we struggle with this transformation, new dimensions are enfolding that necessitate a more humble, compassionate stance.
What does intrinsic human dignity mean? How is this related to the animal kingdom and the rest of creation? Do I have a transcendent vocation that is inherent in intrinsic human dignity? Is this transcendent vocation the mission of a privileged few that fit neatly into my category of ‘redeemed’ or is God’s love and mercy much wider, and perhaps even open to all… maybe even all of creation?
How I answer these questions, will become for me the framework within which I choose to live my life. For me, this is Jesus as God’s revealed Love. This is the image that I hope to reflect. This is the compassionate anointed one, the revelation of God with us who came to bring hope to those who were considered lost sinners, outsiders, and discarded ones.
We do become the image of our beliefs. Our mission is to reflect this image into the world.
Saint Francis went about loving the brothers and sisters of Assisi. He greeted each one with “Pace e bene!” “Peace and good!” When you can greet another with the greeting of peace, then you will not have malice in your heart.
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