You are more than your actions and they do not define you. Watch as Msgr. Don reveals that we all have a special gift of God that demands respect and honor.

Good morning. I want to talk to you for a moment about human dignity. How it is we recognize this, right, that people have a way of being treated, a way of being dealt with. When I think about human dignity, when I am thinking about is there some God given thing inside of you, inside of me, that is a reflection of who God is, and it needs to be honored. It needs to be respected. And everybody has it. In the shadow of religion, in any kind of system where there's somebody evaluating everyone, judging everyone, sometimes they lose the sense that someone has human dignity and they see them only as their actions. You are your sin. You're a thief if you steal. You're a murderer if you murder. Well, are you? I mean, that's a description. But are you in your essence, your sin? Or are you in your essence, the actions that you do? No, it's something much more than that. And what I call that thing that is more is this reflection of God inside of you, the person that God created.

There's a thing in Scripture that always touches me and that's the story between the Adam and Eve story and the call of Abraham. And it's when God looked at the world and he looked at everything he made, and he said, “I am so disgusted with it, all I see is the hardness of their hearts.” Interesting story because he says, “I'm going to destroy them all.” And then he doesn't because of one family. Noah. What is it that Noah has that no one else has? This spark of life, this goodness that's in there. That's the dignity of a human being. When you condemn them, judge them, name them for their actions, you have completely ignored the most powerful thing that God is revealing about human beings and all of his creation.

There's something in the wonder and the awe of that creation called a human being that deserves respect, deserves to be treated with honor. Not that we overlook sin. Not that we have a blind eye to it. No, it's not that. Within the darkest sinner, there is this gift of God, and when you recognize it as human dignity and you honor it, it grows, it develops, and it becomes the people that God called to Abraham. And eventually, with the gift of Jesus, you have this image of the wholeness of a human being. It's inside of everybody. And human dignity demands that we honor it.

Have a good day.

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