Jul

24

Co-Workers of the Truth 7/24

Posted By reynor | Filed Under Co-Workers of the Truth, Pope Benedict XVI 

Benedict XVI“Let us make mankind in our own image, according to our likeness” (Gen 1:26).  God wills the existence of human beings.  Like everything else in the universe, they exist, not by mere chance or by a mere act or by mere power, but by a word that is love, truth, and meaning.  God has a purpose for us and this purpose is our prime origin.  This gives rise to the question: What is that purpose?

One answer might be: He has his own concept of each person; each one is something special, not just one example of a product that has been produced a millionfold. 

Some years ago, there appeared a volume of photographs by a well-known master photographer that bore the title “TheImage of God”.  It contained photographs of human beings, whom it pictured in all their potentialities and lack of potentialities: poor and rich, young and old, well and ill, ordinary, intimidated, tormented, exultant, proud, important.  But when one leafed through the book, always with the title “The Image of God”, ”The Image of God”, in heart and mind, one became very uneasy; one set the book aside in deep depression and asked oneself: What kind of God looks at me from these pictures?

At the very least, a God who is self-contradictory, or one who is powerless, or even one in whom an evil power resides unseen.  But when one regarded the photographs more closely, it became clear: God cannot be photographed, not even by photographing human beings.  The himan being is the image of God; but photographs of human beings are not photgraphs of God.  He is not easily seen.

From: Unpublished homily given at the 88th Deutschen Latholikentag, July 5, 1984 

 

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