ORATORICAL FESTIVAL JUDGES’ CHOICE KATRINA MINA, DIOCESE OF OTTAWA
IN US IS ENGRAVED THE IMAGE “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Now, I could always go into minute detail about the depth of this passage, the revelation of the Trinity in this small phrase, the great honour bestowed upon mankind to be made in the image of the Almighty, the wonder of such words traversing time from Moses to this very moment, and so forth. Because, as we can all agree, I am obviously the most qualified in this room to speak of such subjects. I will speak, however, of what I do know. I live in a big city, and as in every big city, there are many, and I mean many, homeless people. So many, in fact, that I have even become familiar with a few. I can readily recognize the lady who sits in front of the drugstore, even when she is strolling about away from her usual spot. I know the two beggars who sit on opposite sides of the street, one with a cane, the other surrounded with books. I know the nice young man who sits on a blanket in front of an abandoned store with two great, big, and handsome black dogs, who prefers to greet every passerby than to beg for a morsel. I also know the man covered in sores, who rocks back and forth, crying, “I’m cold” in the winter, and “I’m hungry” in the summer. I’ve come to know the smell of homelessness, decay, and of the forgotten. It makes the words spoken at memorials, “May their memory be eternal,” all the
30 November - December 2023
more powerful. The world has forgotten these people. The world has decided that these people were no longer quite human, the fringes in a golden society. Yet it was with them that Christ came and spent time. It is people like them to whom the greatest honours have been given in the history of the saints. They, just like us, are blessed with this thing that not many of us grasp, least of all me: the image of God. I still do not understand this marvel: to be made in the image of God. It was something I brushed off as an old Sunday School story for the longest time. It was as an afterthought, a buzzing in the background, as irrelevant as the pitter-patter of the rain outside my window. I blame this generation of which I am a part. We have been desensitized to the wonders of the world around us, finding what is in our hands – our phones – much worthier of our attention. The more I think about the image of God, however, the more it amazes me. To this day, I don’t quite grasp the magnificence of the honour bestowed upon man. So, I will use the words of one who is far wiser than me, St. Gregory of Nysa: O marvellous! A sun is made, and no counsel precedes; a heaven likewise; and to these no single thing in creation is equal. So great a wonder is formed by a word alone, and the saying indicates neither when, nor how, nor any such detail. So too in all particular cases, the æther, the stars,
