04/30/2026
From the Friar’s Desk~
“Thy Kingdom Come…”
Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a well-known French Jesuit Priest and Christian Mystic, wrote: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” I like this perspective of our spiritual nature being first and foremost in our often very fleshy approach to life and the world. This understanding places an emphasis on the eternal and the mystery of the image of God in each of us as we struggle with what it means to be in this world as spiritual beings. Too often, the spiritual aspects of life are secondary to the lived experience of daily life, with the pursuit of shelter, food, and love being the primary concerns, while the meaning and purpose of life seem an elusive or even a lesser concern. We take for granted the wonder of God’s image in each of us!
Even so, as human creatures, when one of us fails to live into even the lowest of our limits of law and social structure, we dismiss them as “monsters.” They become failures at being human, and are then determined to be “other” than human enough. When this happens, the image of God is replaced with a distortion of man: a soulless, awkward and deficient being, robbed of the few traces of God’s image that might have been present at one time. We paint them as sub-human and banish them into a hell of their own making. And we call that justice.
Our Prayer Book calls us to respect the dignity of every human being, which means acknowledging the inherent, inviolable worth of each person regardless of status, beliefs, or circumstances. It demands treating everyone with love, empathy, and justice, treating humanity as an end in itself rather than a tool for personal gain, and fostering a non-judgmental and inclusive society. What happens to our society when we fail to live into this standard of respect? In a word: chaos. We fail to be as human as we can be within the limits of our broken and fallen world. In reality, the Prayer Book or any standard close to this idea of worth for humanity is ignored, mocked, or dismissed by a vast portion of our world.
To avoid such absurd religiosity, one needs only re-class a person as less than human. Diminish them to monsters so we need not honor or respect them. This approach has worked well throughout human history. The “other” tribe, nation, or group is flawed in some way, so kill them. Examples are numerous; take the African slave trade. At its peak in the 1780’s, as many as 78,000 people were transported annually. This same approach worked very well in the N**i plan to exterminate all Jewish people in Europe, beginning in 1941. This plan, called the "Final Solution,” was to contend with the “problem” of Jews and undesirables in the new German Reich. One class of humans became slaves, a commodity for labor, sale, and trade. The Jews became vermin, like lice, to be eradicated.
There is yet hope… In the Peaceable Kingdom of Jesus, our human dignity will be part of the redemptive nature of a new order for all humanity. The image of God in each will replace the broken sin nature of our earthly existence, and we will become fully human in our resurrected state in the new world. We will be transformed into the complete likeness of Jesus Christ in both spirit and resurrected body. This process reverses the distortion caused by sin, moving from a marred image to a fully glorified reflection of God’s holiness and character. That is good news!
Now we wait. Limited as we may be in our ability to live into what honoring the dignity and God-formed image in every human, we must seek to see Christ in them first, then the ‘thumbprint’ of God’s work in them is more visible and holy than we ever imagined. Yes, Lord, Thy Kingdom come…
Peace in Jesus~
Fr. Travis
