A Person in the World

Third Sunday of Advent. Fr Euan Marley preaches on the importance of bodies.

A favourite question which is asked when discussing abortion is whether it can be proved that an unborn child is a person, even at an early stage in their development. I think we could show that, but it is more relevant to the abortion issue to state something which is obviously true: namely that the only way of being a person in this world is by having a body. Angels and the souls of the dead are persons but they are not persons in this world. They may pray for the world, but that does not mean that they are in this world as persons. To kill someone is to deny them personhood in this world, but not to destroy that personhood.

In Advent we celebrate each year the expectation of what is now true, that the Son of God is a person in our world. He remains a person as the risen Christ, as does Mary his mother, assumed into heaven as she has been. This is the meaning of the incarnation, and the Resurrection does not end that incarnation but makes it permanent. In our liturgy we transform ourselves and all the world by following through the meaning of that incarnation, and we celebrate the Christ who, through his human body, will always be a person in this world and a person with us in the world that is to come.

As persons in the world, we are to respect the personhood of all other persons in this world, and since the only way of being a person in this world is through our human bodies, the only way we can respect that personhood is through those same bodies. This is why there is so much emphasis on care for each other’s bodies. We do this through sharing of what we have in this world. So John the Baptist exhorts the crowd to share clothing and food, warns the tax collectors and soldiers to be content with what is rightfully theirs. We care for each other by charity (in the modern sense) and justice. All of this involves a love for the bodily life of each human being, and so Christ heals the sick and feeds the hungry, and stresses the virtue of chastity, a bodily virtue. This is not because the body is an inviolable good in itself but because it is through the body that we show love for each other, even though our bodies must deteriorate and die. Any talk of love which disregards the body or even suggests that the destruction of the body could be an act of love is from the evil one.

This sort of love was always available to those who cared about God, or at least about people, but John speaks of something greater. The one who was to come who would baptise not just with water but with fire. Again and again, we stress in teaching that grace perfects nature. The greater does not displace the lesser, and so the coming of the Spirit, which is the fire, does not cause us to neglect bodily good. That is a false and dangerous spirituality, which forgets that the Spirit is the lord and giver of life. Every leaf on every tree is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and even more so are our human bodies.

All friendship between human beings is a bodily friendship, an embodiment of God’s love. Water and fire are both good inasmuch as they are good for our bodies, and so symbols of the human need to share. The Roman practice of exiling citizens stated that they were to be deprived of fire and water in the confines of Rome. That is to say, they were to be denied the friendship that human beings owe to one another in the most practical sense. The fire of the Spirit given through water, the gift of Christ body given through the transformation of bread and wine, the ennobling of our dignity through Chrism are all signs of this presence of Christ among us. The prophet Zephaniah words are fulfilled in a more profound sense than he could imagine. ‘Fear not, O Zion, let not your hands grow weak, the Lord is in your midst’.

Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-18a | Philippians 4:4-7 | Luke 3:10-18

Image: detail from a mosaic of the coronation of Our Lady, Queen of Heaven, at Westminster Cathedral, photographed by Fr Lawrence Lew OP.