Reflections from the Heart – May 5, 2024

Sixth Sunday of Easter
by Fr. Ivan Olmo

“Get up. I myself am also a human being.”  I think of how often we use the term or phrase “I am only human” or we say of another, “They are only human.”  At times, we use these terms and phrases in our conversations with others or use them in our conversations when we talk ill about another in the hope to make some kind of atonement for our own sins or amendment for the sins of others.  At times, we refer to being only human in attempts to bring a quick resolution to an unpleasant family situation or even to draw a quick happy conclusion to a raging stormy argument or the end of a healthy friendly debate. During these circumstances, saying or referring to the fact we are only human sounds much like an excuse or a diminishment of the reality and the dignity of being human with a touch of the divine.  We make it sound so terrible to be formed, created and blessed, to have “being”, in the image and likeness of God.  Our Lord is light, true light, pure light; God is love, is light, is life.  God is the source of all that is beautiful, the Creator of all that is good, wholesome, lovely, and true.  God is life and all that draws life from God lives and has being because God graciously creates and wills it so.  God is alive and all that lives is alive and lives life in and through, and with God.  Our very breath is not to be temporary, time bound in any way, borrowed for some time, or even limited by death.  Our breath is not to be constrained in any way but freely alive for it is a precious gift from God. Our breath is like a heavenly spiritual dewfall from God himself for the air we breathe, the breath we share, the oxygen in our lungs is the sacred breath of God living and breathing in you and me, and that is not an excuse or an accident but a gracious gift not diminishing in any way.  Jesus is true God and true man.  In Jesus, we experience a wonderful holy exchange of humanity and divinity, blessed by God, united in eternal breath and truly consecrated in a spiritual communion for all eternity.  Being human is to be like Mary, like Joseph, like all the holy women and men we call saints.  We beg our heavenly human family to help us realize that being “only human” is truly blessed and only divine.