Wednesday, May 30, 2012

In God's Hands: The Truth Of The Human Person

Today, when I was reading Pope Benedict XVI, I came across this text from a homily given on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 2005. Here we have expressed again what might be called a "theocentric humanism" - the great doctrinal development in the Church of the truth about the human person and human freedom. This is one of the enduring achievements of Vatican II and a central theme of the magnificent and profound teaching of Blessed John Paul II.

The Church continues to preach the truth about the human person, in a world of people who are so desperate to understand themselves and so vulnerable before the powers of distraction, deception, and ideologies that suffocate the human spirit.

Indeed, the time of the person has come. And through the miracle of Christ's enduring presence in the Church we are prompted to remember who we are.

God's will is not a law for the human being imposed from the outside and that constrains him, but the intrinsic measure of his nature, a measure that is engraved within him and makes him the image of God, hence, a free creature....
The person who abandons himself totally in God's hands does not become God's puppet, a boring "yes man"; he does not lose his freedom. Only the person who entrusts himself totally to God finds true freedom, the great, creative immensity of the freedom of good.
The person who turns to God does not become smaller but greater, for through God and with God he becomes great, he becomes divine, he becomes truly himself. The person who puts himself in God's hands does not distance himself from others, withdrawing into his private salvation; on the contrary, it is only then that his heart truly awakens and he becomes a sensitive, hence, benevolent and open person.
The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people. We see this in Mary. The fact that she is totally with God is the reason why she is so close to human beings.
For this reason she can be the Mother of every consolation and every help, a Mother whom anyone can dare to address in any kind of need, in weakness and in sin, for she has understanding for everything and is for everyone the open power of creative goodness.

The truth about the human person, with all of our greatness, frailty, and freedom immersed in the drama of the Redemption, is a living reality. We must take it up again and again, and this means that is has to be something intimate, something that does not fly off into abstraction, something that accompanies us.

Here Mary, our Mother, leads us by the hand....