This reflection is credited to my beautiful wife, Connie. She received this ‘message’ at a recent Mass.
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image’” Genesis 1:26
As we journey along in our RV, Faith, we have visited many different Catholic Churches for Mass. We are guided by God to visit a different Church each week, seldom revisiting a Church.
My wife saw that every Church we have gone to is different. They have different exterior faces and varied ‘souls’ within and behind their doors. The texture of their community is wildly varied. The differences of their altars, their artwork and design are as varied as snowflakes. We have traveled from the Spanish rooted Florida Church, through central Atlantic churches heavy with a rural heartbeat and simplicity through a Pittsburgh Church rooted in a multitude of European Catholicism, and up into the northeastern New England Catholic Churches as aged as our nation.
But, at the root of all within these churches is Jesus Christ. One church may be very different from another even across the same town, as varied as one man is from another. The color of their skin, shade of their hair and eyes and the personalities that make them unique. But, within, all men carry the Divine Spark from the moment of conception through natural death and into eternity.
God gave His breath and Spirit to make all men in His image. That image goes way beyond ‘skin deep.’
The image of God refers to the immaterial part of humanity. It sets human beings apart from the animal world, fits them for the dominion God intended them to have over the earth, and enables them to commune with their Maker. It is within the spirit that all men are images of God, our Creator. It isn’t about being the same externally or in personality, it is the unique joy of bearing the image of God imprinted upon our souls. For when the bricks of the buildings crumble and our mortal, human frames return to the earth, it is the spirit and likeness of God that will carry through eternity.
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.” 1 Corinthians 12:12-14
God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27