Welcoming the Person

 I have been pondering the effects of this pandemic on our social and spiritual health, in light of the Theology of the Body. 

We are made with a need for community. We are wired for it. Our need for community comes from a need to fulfill a purpose and our bodies are created to participate. We have been given bodies to do what God has planned for our race from before time, to show forth the Divine Image. In the communion of persons and in community, God is in some way visible. The human person is unique to all creation and is called to be a gift. Each person is also unique in the place and time that they are given. 

"The body expresses the person", as St John Paul II states. Our bodies, with faces that are windows into our souls, and the ability to show feelings through the language of the body, are like books that can be opened and read. They can be flipped through, or savored. From a smile in the the grocery aisle, to a hug between friends, to the intimacy of marriage, we are creatures who give ourselves through our bodies. 

Jesus always touched. He used his body, to comfort, to heal, to deliver. It wasn't just incidental. He wanted to come and be with us in a physical way. God wanted to share in the dance of humanity. In the Gospel this weekend, Jesus is approached by a leper, who asks to be healed. Jesus doesn't stand off at a distance and heal from afar, as he certainly could have. No, "He stretched out his hand, touched him, and said 'I do will it, be made clean.'" Jesus gives of himself entirely, all the way to the cross, and it is his body that he gives. He shows us how. He asks us to give ourselves in the same way.

It has been a tough year for that. We are living through a time when it is getting harder and harder to be ourselves and give ourselves, in every respect. We have the Covid virus, which has us masking our faces in public. It has made hugging and even sitting close together in groups socially unacceptable. 

We have a cancel culture which rejects the ideas and truths of most of western culture. Most of us have understood the structure of our lives to be a vertical one, whether we acknowledge it or not. Our nation was founded "under God" and we have the Judeo/Christian principles built into every aspect of our society. At the present time those principles are being denigrated and we are told that we are not welcome to express our deepest sense of who we are. 

The person is not welcome. 

The body is unable to express and the soul is not encouraged to express, in the larger community. We are becoming a world of lepers. We are living in fear. Fear of illness, and fear of ideas. In Jesus time leprosy was a dread disease. It was feared so much that those who were stricken were to remain isolated from society indefinitely. Jesus teachings were also feared, and he was killed for speaking the truth about himself.

 He showed us how to conquer fear. He conquered fear with love. 

It is hard to love those who refuse to see us. I think it is easier to love my enemy than it is to love someone who just writes off all that I hold dear. Someone who won't have a conversation or even look at what might be possible, because of what I profess. That is a rejection of the deepest part of a person. We are not just rejected for how we vote or what we do to witness to Christ, but for our very thoughts. For our heritage. 

We have to find a way to love them. Not to convert them, convince them or change the way they think to our purposes, but because of who they are. We have to love the person. We have to welcome the person and we have to live in love in a world that hates. Our love has to show. It is our mission. I need to do a much better job in this department. To not be defensive, to not be offended. It's tough.

Lord Jesus, show me the way.