The Evangelical Pope | In His Image, We Are One

Each week we let Saint Pope John Paul II share meaningful signposts to spark socio-economic resolves through justice and righteousness combined with mercy and compassion; in short, love.

               ²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that                             they may have dominion [have stewardship] over the fish in the sea and the birds                         in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,^[a] and over all the                                         creatures that move along the ground.”

               ²⁷ So God created humankind in his image,
                In the image of God, he created them;
                Male and female, he created them.

               ²⁸ God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and                      subdue it. Have dominion [have stewardship] over the fish in the sea, the birds in the                    sky, and every living creature that moves on the ground.”

               __ Genesis 1: 26-28 (New International Version)

Astana, Eurasia University, KAZAKHSTAN – 23 September 2001 | I have been told that, in your beautiful Kazakh language, "I love you" is "men senen jaskè korejmen," which can be translated as "I look upon you well; my gaze upon you is good."

               Human love, but more fundamentally still God’s love for humanity and creation, stems from a loving gaze.

               This gaze helps us see the good and leads us to do what is good: "God saw everything he had made, and he found it very good" (Genesis 1: 31).

               Such a gaze allows us to see all that is positive in things and leads us to ponder far beneath the surface the beauty and richness of every human being we meet.

Spontaneously, we ask ourselves, “What constitutes the beauty and greatness of the human person?" Here is my answer:

               What makes a human being great is the stamp of God, which each of us bears. According to the Bible, a human being is created "in the image and likeness of God" (Genesis 1: 26).

               The human heart is never satisfied: it wants more and better.

               It wants everything. No finite reality satisfies or placates its longing.

Saint Augustine, one of the early Church Fathers, wrote:

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you" (Confessions, 1,1).

Is it not perhaps the same intuition that prompts the question that your great thinker and poet Ahmed Jassavi repeats several times in his poems:

               "What is life’s point if not to be given by and given to the Most High God?"

God entrusts humankind with giving life to men and women and awaits their response. To declare that the purpose of human life, with all its experiences, joys, and sorrows, is that it be "given to the Most High God" in no way diminishes or denies our life.

It asserts the human person's supreme dignity: made in God's image and likeness, men and women are called to cooperate in transmitting life and custodian over creation (Genesis 1:26-28).

The Pope of Rome has come to say this to each one of you: there is a God who has thought of you and given you life. He loves you personally, and he entrusts the world to you. It is he who stirs in you the thirst for freedom and the desire for knowledge.

Excerpted from:

Pastoral Visit in Kazakhstan, Meeting With Young People, Address of John Paul II, Astana – Eurasia University, Sunday, 23 September 2001

https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2001/september/ documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20010923_kazakhstan-astana-youth.html