I AM ---
I am
Identity and Responsibility
By Father
Omar A. Huesca - ©
IMAGO DEI APOSTOLATE
Back in 1959, when I was nine years old, I recall waking up on the first day of that year to a strange sound. It was the noise of shouts and nervous laughter coming from the crowds that were moving, seemingly without any specific direction, through the narrow street of the central district of Habana.
We lived in a big old house that dated back to colonial times, and in spite of its architectural beauty and charm, I must confess, that it was in dire need of repair. Its old wooden shutters opened, from the high sealing to the old and cracked marble floor, unto the narrow street the house faced. I recall how, in that morning my mother pulled us children away from the front of the house to the rear area, where, protected by thick stone walls, we could not see the crowd, or understand the words that their clamoring contained.
My mother’s effort to protect us from the confusion did not come soon enough to
shield me from a stunning event the memory of which I still carry.
I remember seeing a man run through the frame that the opening of our
door created for my vision. He went
by at top speed, wearing a tattered shirt.
In a flash, the man disappeared from view, and another man took his
place. The second man did not run
by. He squatted down on one knee,
assuming a position that strangely reminded me of the genuflection we were
taught to make every time we went by the Blessed Sacrament in Church.
But this man, who was wearing a drab, olive green uniform, with a
military cap, and sporting a reddish, gnarled beard, was holding a long rifle,
taking careful aim at something.
Suddenly, my stomach felt the shock of the concussion caused by an explosion.
The man had fired his weapon, and in a moment of unmitigated fear, I knew
what had happened, and I cried.
The adults at home seemed sullen from then on.
There was much monitoring of television programs and radio broadcasts so
that the children could not hear or see what occurred in the following days and
months. A feeling that something
overwhelming and ominous was happening filled the very air we breathed.
The seeds of atheistic Communism, which had been nourished in the soil of
recklessness and corruption of the past, had begun to bear their poisonous
fruit.
After a short time, a wholesale rewriting of history began, which, not only
exaggerated the folly of the past, but extirpated all references to whatever
good existed in years gone by.
Populations were shifted from cities to countryside, and from countryside to
cities. The lives of national heroes
were revised to show them as precursors of communism.
Streets and plazas were renamed.
Even the geographical references and indicators were changed.
A new identity was manufactured for the people.
Those who did not conform to this identity, were seen a threat to the new
order, and had to pay the price for their personalism, a price that was couched
in inhumane cruelty, as seen in the events recounted above and carried in my
memory.
In a society of mass identity, those who dare say “I am”, must deal with the
consequences of such an affirmation: ridicule, ostracizing, persecution, and
sometimes, even death. But the loss
of personal identity always results in mass mentality, and never in a true
community. I must be “I” before I
can be part of “we”. Herein lies the
urgency to ask ourselves the question, who am I?
I AM
I am
God created human beings in His own image and likeness.
If we are to live, and truly be whom we were created to be, we must know
who we are, that is to say, image of God, by God’s condescendence and grace.
Again, before I can be part of “we”, I must be “I”; before
I can experience “we are”, I must be solidly grounded in “I am”.
The enemy has always been intent in pulling us away from this principle,
so as to deprive us of our original, august identity as image of God, and this
in order to have his way we us. I
must know who I am, or I will be easy pray to the cruelty of the devil, who, in
his arrogance, always tries to mimic God.
The enemy, by distorting our identity, would try to “re-create” us in his
miserable image and likeness. May
God have mercy on us!
What follows is in no way intended to minimize the importance of the communion between man and women, with its fruit of new life in their children, as a living image of the Most Holy Trinity. Neither should any erroneous assumption be made that, by referring the human family to God, I am in any way stipulating that God, in whose Image we are made, was at some time One, and then became Trinity. In the contrary, as stated before, God is immutable from all eternity, and is eternally One true God, and Trinity of consubstantial Persons, equal in glory dignity, power and divinity, yet distinct one from the other. It is by pointing to the distinctness of man and woman, united as one, and bringing forth new life in their children, that I intend to reaffirm the power Christian marriage and family have to reflect the Trinitarian Mystery. At the same time, I wish to point to the danger of confusing or blurring that distinctness. Blurring or denial of the distinct identities of man and woman in their marital and familial communion, is always a lamentable travesty, as the blurring or denial of the distinctness of the Divine Persons in the Holly Trinity has always constitute heresy, as history has proven.
While it is true that the first account of the creation of human beings in Genesis 3: 14 speaks of both male and female being created at the same time, I propose that there is no contradiction with the second account, which I see as being complementary; The first relates to the equality in dignity of man and woman, and to their imaging of God together, while the second, found in Genesis 2: 16-25, reveals the distinct characteristics of male and female that, together, constitute that fullness of image of God which we are. In any case, our modern, western understanding of action and sequential events is very different from the mentality and mode of expression of the Hebraic writers who recorded God’s revelation in Genesis. As men, it behooves us to look at that second account, to identify those traits proper to us, and to see the dreadful consequences of not living them.
Equal in dignity, distinct in role identity, and
complementary in imaging God
fully.
|
Later, in the third chapter of Genesis, we read the account of the fall, and we
see that the serpent engages the woman in a deceiving conversation, beginning
with a question that is a distortion of the truth: “Did God really tell you not
to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” (Genesis 3: 1)
emphasis added by the author.
Thereupon, the woman commits the deadliest of mistakes by engaging the
devil in conversation. The serpent
then proceeds to issue the full lie, for he is the father of lies: “the serpent
said to the woman: ‘you certainly will not die’…” (Genesis 3: 4-5).
The woman ate, gave to the man and he also ate, and the rest is history,
the saddest of histories.
The question is: Where was the man while all this was happening?
He had been entrusted with the commandment of God.
He had been charged with guarding original grace by not entering into
knowledge of evil, and all this, before the woman ever appeared in the scene.
The man had failed to be the guardian, the protector, which God had
established him to be. He was not
true to the identity given to him by God; He had forgotten his very identity and
mission, since the Hebrew word for man
here stems from the root of the verb to
remember.
The man was made first, indicating that he was to be the foundational member of
the unity of man and woman (Genesis 2:
25), called to image God, who, being Trinity, is One.
The woman was made from the side of the man, bone of his bones and flesh
of his flesh, as he joyfully declared.
She was to be his support, as a buttress that assures that a structure
does not collapse under the stress of its own weight, his equal in dignity, yet
distinct in personal identity and role. The
man was to be the head[2],
and the woman was to be the heart of this communion, this exchange of love that
is called to image the very Trinitarian Oneness who is God.
Alas, the roles were inverted, and identities were confused.
With the woman assuming the initiative proper to the role of the man, who
was established to be guardian and protector, but who had acted out of
forgetfulness, in negligence and passivity, as expressed in the biblical
narrative, the stage was set for the disastrous consequences of sin, the
distortion and fracturing of the divine image in us.
Identity and responsibility
The loss of identity will lead to the blurring of our awareness of
responsibility. The more blurred our
sense of responsibility becomes, the easier it is for us to become passive and
disengaged, leaving a vacuum in the relational order which God created for man
and woman, and for the family they are ordained to form as a source of ever new
and ongoing life, imaging the Triune God who is Life Itself.
Is this not what has happened, in an alarming manner, to the identity of men
over the past four decades, particularly in their role as fathers?
Even the most superficial look at our cultural indicators, such as what
is being produced by the cinema industry, the electronic media, and much of what
is written today for popular consumption, will show an image of fathers as soft,
inept, disengaged characters, or silly and pathetic buffoons, that would hardly
be missed if they disappeared from the scene.
Other caricatures of the father abound, such as the brutal, womanizing,
dictatorial tyrant, who should be cast out forthwith.
The former, compounded with the advance of liberal feminism and its hatred of
men, the push of the homosexualist movement to reconstruct the human family to
accommodate all kinds of bizarre configurations, and the efforts by socialistic
ideologies to increase governmental control of the family, among other trends in
our society, has resulted in the distortion, and almost eclipsing of the image
of fatherhood, as established by God.
While it is obvious that all caricatures contain an element of truth, it is just
as evident that what makes a caricature is the singling out of certain traits
and exaggerating them into a comical, or pathetic distorted image of the reality
being portrayed. Yet, if we
passively accept these terrible caricatures of manhood in general, and
fatherhood in particular, which are being pedaled in contemporary society,
because of the inadequacies of some, or perhaps many men and fathers of our
time, then we will be accomplices in the dark work of rejecting God’s order and
design for the human family.
By running from the challenge of rediscovering the biblical role of man as
guardian and protector, as servant-father, we would deny our sons the wholesome
and holy model of manhood so sorely lacking in today’s society.
Only when men rediscover their identity as lovers and protectors of their wives,
their most precious treasure, whom they are called to love and give themselves
for (Ephesians 5: 25-33), will women regain their true identity as equal
in dignity, but free to be who they are uniquely as wives and mothers, without
having to carry the burden of the unfulfilled role of their men.
Then, the fullness of dignity will crown man and woman in the mystery of
marriage, which in itself is the image of Christ’s life-giving love for the
Church, in His act of redemption.
After our women, the immediate beneficiaries of this recovery of the identity of
men as protectors and servant-fathers, who head their families in service and
obedience of God, are our children, who will grow within the warmth and safety
of a family that affords them the blessing of clearly defined, yet lovingly
united parents. Children need this
clarity, this structure, to feel safe as they grow in awareness of their own
identity, and of the providential love of God.
The recovery of the biblical identity of man in general, and father in
particular, is crucial for the healing of our wounded families and our
disintegrating society. Catholic men
and fathers of today can not procrastinate in their consideration of these
realities, or in their commitment to be part of the solution for the confusion
and distortions of our troubled times.
Can we not hear the plea of Philip echoing through the centuries, and
with particular urgency today: “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough
for us” (John 14: 8). It is the vocation of every Catholic man, to show
forth the Father, in imitation of Christ, whose mission was to reveal the Father
and lead all to Him.
As the image of fatherhood goes in our civilization, so goes our remembrance of
the One True God, and our desire to relate to Him in reverence and obedient
love, for He has revealed Himself to us as the Father.
Let us turn to Him, who is our salvation, for, “have we not all one
Father? Has not one God created us?”
(Malachi 2: 10).
Maranatha!
Come, Lord Jesus!