embracing our humanity - 28th week Thursday 2013

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch who was martyred in the year 107.  The church remembers him very well for he was the successor of St. Peter in the church of Antioch where for the first time the followers of Jesus were called Christians.  St. Ignatius became also the first to refer to the Christian community as catholic by calling it the Catholic Church.  St. Ignatius is well remembered because while he was being brought to Rome to be executed he wrote letters to different churches along the way.  When he arrived in Rome escorted by soldiers he was led to the amphitheater where he was devoured by two fierce lions.

One of the things St. Ignatius fought was the heresy called the Docetism who denied the human nature of Christ – Christ was not a human being.  Probably they could not bear the thought that Christ became human like us in all things but sin.  Probably they viewed him as somebody so holy, so totally other, they could not bear the thought that he assumed what they viewed as the despicable nature of a human being.  In their thought when you are human you are a failure, when you are human you are flawed, when you are human you are weak and you are bound to fail.  Therefore Christ cannot be human.  But Docetism failed to see the other side of our humanity.  IT did not see its capacity, its potential and its greatness. 

A person who does not have the capacity to see the human person in its giftedness and choose to see only its frailty is a Docetists.

And this is the point of our gospel these past days when Jesus condemned the attitude of the Pharisees.  The failure to see the reality of human person is the root of two of the greatest sins in the world condemned in the gospel.  It is the sin of scrupulosity and the sin of self-righteousness.  When we choose to see only human frailty and turn a blind eye to our giftedness and goodness as persons we become scrupulous and guilt ridden.  When we choose to see only the good and turn a blind eye to the reality of human weakness and frailty in us we also become self-righteous.  In life it is important to embrace our giftedness and at the same time expressed our need to be saved from our frailties and our limitations.  Thus, St. Ignatius of Antioch would end his life in one of his letters asking the people, Pray for me, he said, so that I may not fail the test.

Today let us pray with St. Ignatius conscious of our potentials and what we are called to become yet conscious also of our frailty for which Jesus came to save us.