Identity

“So the criteria by which we are judged is our acts of love, or our lack of these acts of love. Through these acts of charity such as feeding the poor, visiting the prisoners and the sick and more, we prove our identities. We prove to be who we claim to be, children of the Most high God. We prove that we are His by our similarity to Him. When we think about it we find that each of these things, feedings the poor, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked and visiting the prisoners; each of these groups is a group with which Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself identifies! He was hungry when He fasted for 40 days. He was a prisoner as He waited for His crucifixion. He was thirsty and naked when He hung upon the tree of the cross. So Our Lord asks us to see His face in each of these suffering people within our society and our lives. The Lord gives us a great blessing by attaching His identity to these least of the brethren because in attaching His identity to them, He is granting us great and bountiful blessings if we choose to serve Him by serving them.” (Fr. James Guirguis)

“There is nothing precise that we can identify as the “self” in such a manner that we “empty it.” We could identify desires, thoughts, plans, wealth, energy, and the like as things that we might choose to deny or give up. And this has been a well-worn path in asceticism and monastic life through the centuries. But it still concentrates our efforts on an absence, leaving us with nothing within. Such an absence is ultimately a misunderstanding of self-emptying…“emptying” is a paradoxical phrase. We do not and cannot “empty” the self without reference to another. Christ’s own offering on the Cross was not an act of isolated renunciation. It was profoundly an act of love in which He emptied Himself but also filled Himself in union with our brokenness.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“…‘condescends” has a negative connotation of doing something beneath one’s dignity with the insulting notion that the people being dealt with are not deserving of your presence. However, it can also imply an unequal relationship in which one person unexpectedly does a favor for others who are not their equal. This is...the way the word is used when applied to the incarnation of God. God becomes human – humbly gives up His divine throne –…to save humanity from death by uniting fallen humanity once again to the divine. God’s condescension shows…God’s humility and…love for His creation. …God is willing to identify with His creation, to become part of His creation as an act of love for creation and to redeem it. God freely and willingly becomes incarnate to raise us up to Himself.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)

“Many people today scroll quickly through the many options they have in choosing how to identify themselves…It easier than ever before to try out all kinds of choices and to disregard those that we do not find immediately appealing or fulfilling. Not only has our society formed us as consumers who want our immediate preferences satisfied, the digital age has made it even easier to flit from this to that whenever we experience just a hint of boredom, frustration, or disappointment. In such a culture, we are all at risk of forming habits that compromise our faithfulness to the way of Christ, which requires steadfast commitment and ongoing struggle as we persist in taking up our crosses each day of our lives.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)

“We all have an “identity crisis” but only some of us realize it. For those of us who do and embrace the struggle, it may feel bad, but it is good first step to seeking and finding our true identity in Christ.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)

“Much of what we think of as our “identity” (which will shift and change somewhat in various settings) are the constructs we have managed to assemble over time, while our true self remains hidden…The truth of our identity is not known to us. You do not know who you are. An identity is not something of our own making – it is the gift of God. We come to know it as Christ makes it known to us. We can only know the truth of ourselves as we find it in Christ. Christ (“who is our life”) is the truth of our existence. We should never settle for less.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“Christian identity originates from and is sustained by worship, in the lex orandi, and that secularism is quite simply the negation of worship…We find our creative identity in God.” (Vigen Guroian, Makoto Fujimura) 

“Within the limits of this world, it is death which seals the life-story of each person, revealing the final shape of that narrative and the identity of the person as they are remembered within this world. So also the life and identity of each person who turns to Christ is stamped or sealed by their baptism, in imitation of Christ’s own death, dying to sin and this world. Yet for now their life and true identity “lies hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3.3), awaiting the decisive moment of their actual death, which will reveal whether their heart is still attached to this world, so making the transition of death painful, or whether it lies with God, so that they will be able to say, with Christ and the martyrs, “into thy hands I commend my spirit,” a self-offering which makes their whole life and being, even in death, eucharistic. Until that moment, and in preparation for it, Christian life in this world is a continual practice of death, or rather, of life in death, taking up the Cross daily and laying down their life for others, considering themselves dead to this world but alive in Christ Jesus.” (Fr. John Behr) 

“…we must remember our true identity in Christ and “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.” Forgetting the past, we must focus on doing what we can today to live as God’s holy temple as we offer ourselves, especially the weak and distorted dimensions of our lives, in humility for Christ’s healing. To do so does not mean feeling sorry for ourselves or becoming paralyzed by hurt pride when we confront how we have fallen short, whether in the past or today. It does not mean despairing of healing in the future. It does not mean giving up when we fail to resist any temptation or when we do not seem to be progressing on a schedule that we have set. It means instead that, as we come to see with a measure of clarity where we stand before the Lord, we refuse to stop calling for His mercy from the depths of our hearts as we undertake the daily struggle to turn away from sin and share more fully in His salvation. It means that we let nothing keep us from embracing our true identity as God’s temple, as members of Christ’s Body. In Him, we are no longer strangers and foreigners but beloved sons and daughters of God called to “make holiness perfect in the fear of God.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)

“Many Eastern religious practices… correlate spiritual progress with a loss of personhood and a negation of personal identity. By contrast, new creation theology teaches that by denying the passions and cooperating with the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, we become more truly ourselves. Through theosis (becoming like God), our individual talents, personality traits, and idiosyncrasies become sanctified, so that one saint can be as different from another as a rose is from a daffodil while remaining equally holy.” (Robin Phillips)

“The modern world is a difficult place in which to find the self, if, for no other reason, than its own fascination with what it describes as the self. The creation of an identity is among the many modern projects – it has become an object of our consumption. We not only “pick” an identity, we tend to “accessorize” as well.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“We recognize that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14)—completely unique and incomparable to any other human being. And for this reason, we don’t waste our time judging or comparing ourselves to others—it is futile and delusional…Vanity is man’s attempt to piece together an identity apart from God.” (Kevin Scherer)

“The concept of groping blindly for God is not difficult to understand in our so-called ‘post-Christian’ era. To experience even minimally a longing to know God is to be human. Even those of us who may be ignorant of revealed truth sense that such truth exists. The problem arises when our humanity – our being human – is vitiated by idolatry. When we individually or collectively give ourselves “wholly to idolatry” whether in the worship of power, pleasure, wealth, or even of ourselves, we allow the dignifying imago dei within us – the very identity that makes us human – to be corrupted. However, even in our corrupted and dehumanized state we are always able, as St. Paul says, to “grope for” and find God.” (Dana Robinson)

“America has a pervading reverence for individuality and autonomy. We often link our identity with our ability to act, that is, to teach, engineer, philosophize, or even parent. Many of us could say, “I accomplish, therefore I am.”… The Church Fathers, however, had a very different perspective. Two central understandings of human nature run throughout their teachings. First, they define personhood in terms of relationship — to be a person is to be dialogic. Second, they insist on a psychosomatic union — that is, that the body and soul share an inseparable unity…Human nature is dialogic. Deep down, each of us yearns to be in dialogue, in communion, with God and one another…each of us has an innate drive and propensity to reach out beyond ‘self’ towards the ‘other.’” (Peter Kavanaugh)

“Reminding people of our common life—that we are neighbors first—is a task of culture care. We acknowledge openly the borders of our groups and acknowledge too the legitimate things that divide us. Our responsibility, then, is to rehumanize this divide. An emphasis on our role as neighbor as part of our identity begins this process by reminding us of our shared cultural and geographical spaces and the fact that proximity brings responsibility. Even apart from Jesus’ call to love our neighbor, we know that our common flourishing depends on each other.” (Makoto Fujimura)

“All of us yearn for an identity, to know who we are at the core of our being, to be secure in who we are, and to be known for who we really are…Amazingly, God often chooses to reveal who we are in the midst of suffering. This may come as a shock to us; after all, desert experiences are probably the last places we’d think to look in order to discover our God-given identities. Indeed, it seems incredibly strange that God would reveal our identities and his own in the crucible of pain. But He does. God uses our identity crises to reveal who we are and who He is.” (Marlena Graves)

“The fact is, everyone suffers from an identity crisis—it’s our broken inheritance from Adam and Eve…The experiences of despair and futility lead a person to question his identity, self-worth, and significance. In the Garden, man’s identity is informed and secured by God’s goodness and love. But outside of the Garden, there is only confusion, and man is at a loss to understand his true calling and direction in life. As a result, over the course of a lifetime, he tries on different identities, looking for something that brings him a sense of security, acceptance, and significance.” (Kevin Scherer)

“If I don’t know God, I don’t know myself, because I am made in God’s image and likeness. I need to know God to know who I am, to have an authentic identity. Much of the contemporary search for identity is a deeper, though often unconscious, seeking for Christ within our hearts.” (Albert S. Rossi)

“We never lose who we are as persons in this growth and union with Christ - just the opposite. We realize more and more of our true selves. It’s the complete reverse of what we see in Scriptures when someone is possessed by a demon and has lost their identity. Union with God, or allowing ourselves to be possessed by Him so to speak, brings nothing but joy, peace, and full realization of who we are and are meant to be in this life.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)

“People are not machines, wherein you push a button, and they automatically act one way and think one way. People are individuals with a unique personal identity, never to be seen again anywhere, at any time in the history of the world.” (Bishop John of Amorion)

#MarlenaGraves #KevinScherer #AlbertRossi #SacramentalLivingMinistries #BishopJohnofAmorion #FatherStephenFreeman #DanaRobinson #PeterKavanaugh #MakotoFujimura #VigenGuroian #FrJohnBehr #FrPhilipLeMasters #RobinPhillips #FrJamesGuirguis #FrTedBobosh