Reflections | HUMANITY

Our humanity is not a burden but an incredible gift. Msgr. Don Fischer reflects on how our humanity keeps us moving forward and the dangers of denying or judging it.

Good morning. Humanity. You've got it. I've got it. What is it? Sometimes you can think of it as a burden. You know, we want to be spiritual. We don’t want to shake this body of all of its needs and wants and desires and things like that. But that's such a misunderstanding, because humanity is the greatest gift that we have.

And if there's something about God that I love thinking about and talking about is that he took human form, he took it on, and it was in a human form that he saved the world. And it was his humanity. There was an incredibly important ingredient in his ability to save the world because he knew what it was like to be you, to be me.

So when you think about how you deal with your humanity, one of the ways you can think about it is, it is the one thing that all of us, all of us share in this one thing. And what is the nature of it? Evolution, change, growth, breakthrough after breakthrough. An ability to somehow build on mistakes and find the wisdom that mistakes give us. All of that is part of our human nature. The worst thing we've done to human nature is to deny it or reject it because of an illusion that we sometimes think religion is engaged in, and that is calling us to perfection.

Jesus wasn't perfect in the way he lived out his life. Doesn't mean he sinned, but he was human. And when you think that God used a divine slash human being to teach us how to live in this world, and you know that he's talking about not denying our humanity in order to be what God wants, but embracing it. Embrace your humanity. It's your greatest gift, and it will reveal itself to you. I guarantee you. Stop judging it and start embracing it. 

Have a great day.

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Kyle Cross