The Christian faith regards each and every human being under the sun as being the living image of God himself. This image culminates itself into the mystery of Christ, who stands as the perfect image of God – the only divine and human person who reveals God to the human being and the latter to him. The Pastoral Constitution on the Church, Gaudium et Spes affirms that, “by His incarnation, the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man” (Gaudium et Spes 22).
God fashions the human being from the earth and blows into his nostrils the breath of life. God’s very life is deeply infused within the human person. This sublime, solemn yet delicate act of creation, heralds an extraordinary reality: it is solely thanks to God that the human person becomes capable of entering into a covenanted communion with His Creator. Now, the human being has in himself that essential “capacity for God” (homo est Dei capax). This is possible since his very nature comes from God. That is why St Augustine blatantly confesses to God, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
In the biblical understanding, the human person is intrinsically linked with the earth. The Hebrew word for both man and the earth is the same: adamah. The human person’s relationship with God necessarily opens the former to the social reality. As Pope John Paul stressed very well in his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae, “in the other, whether man or woman, there is a reflection of God himself, the definitive goal and fulfilment of every person” (Evangelium Vitae, 35).
The human person, understood as man and woman, finds his highest fulfillment in the reciprocal gift of self to the other. This gift is of an immense value and meaning. It shows that the human person, like God, stoops down from himself and opens an interpersonal dialogue with others. The hope that such dialogue offers to the human being is that the more he is able to meet with the face of the other, the more he will enter into a fruitful, reflective and constructive relationship with himself.
Nowadays’, egoistic tendencies have their beginnings in the original sin. The human person wanted to take God’s place. Because he disobeyed God, the human person has wilfully separated himself from God, his only Lord and the fountain and ultimate purpose of his existence. For the first time in history, the human being experienced both a personal and a social division. Sin has now pervaded the social domain. That mutual communion between the human beings, which was the structure of every human relationship, has now been turned into a hostility, violence, and distance from one another. Thus, as “by virtue of human solidarity which is as mysterious and intangible as it is real and concrete, (likewise) each individual’s sin in some way affects others” (Reconciliatio et Paenitentiae, 16).
Being confronted by such an unbearable situation, contrary to his nature, the human person has never ceased to free himself from the structures of sin he himself created by his actions. For those who accept Christ as their Lord and Saviour, “a great light … has dawned” on them (Matt 4, 16). In and through Christ, the human being has been saved once and for all from the terror of sin and death.
“In him God reconciled man to himself” (Reconciliatio et Paenitentiae, 10). Thanks to the Son of God made man, the human person has become himself a perpetuating song of reconciliation, love, solidarity and peace. Hence, the universality of sin has been defeated once and for all by the universality of salvation brought to the human person by the God-man Jesus Christ, “the perfect man who has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin”(Redemptor Hominis, 8).
To this basic, yet essential declaration of the Christian faith, the whole creation, freed from sin, exults in joy and thanksgiving to its saving Lord, precisely because the redemption of its steward, the human person has taken place. “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may sprout forth, and let it cause righteousness to spring up also; I the Lord have created it” (Is 45, 8).
Christian anthropology presents five aspects which further elucidate the nature of the human person: (1) unity of the person; (2) openness to transcendence and uniqueness of the person; (3) the freedom of the person; (4) the equal dignity of all people; and (5) the social nature of the human person.
The human being was created by God as one entity, consisting of body and soul (corpore et anima unus). The soul stands as the form of the physical body. In other words, “it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living body” (Cathecism of the Catholic Church, 365). On the other hand, the human person “is obliged to regard his body as good and honourable since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day” (Gaudium et Spes, 14). Therefore, one is to conclude that the union of spirit and matter within the human person constitutes one nature.
The more the human person enters in himself, the more he realises that he has an eternal destiny. By virtue of his spiritual and immortal soul, he can talk with God and other people. He can only understand himself insofar as he is capable of entering a relationship with the other. Having said that, it needs to be said that communion with God and people does not diminish the uniqueness and unrepeatability of his nature.
On the contrary. The human person is able of understanding, possessing and determining himself. It is his personhood, which is his bottom line for being a person, rather than his acts of the intellect, consciousness or freedom. Consequently, every economic, social or political activity is duty bound to “work for the benefit of the human person, if the disposition of affairs is to be subordinate to the personal realm and not contrariwise” (Gaudium et Spes, 26).
Furthermore, authentic progress can only be attained when freedom is responsibly accountable to God and neighbour. From his very nature, the human person is morally obliged to integrate and base his freedom on the natural moral law. Such a law “hinges upon the desire for God and submission to him, who is the source and judge of all that is good, as well as upon the sense that the other is one’s equal” (Cathecism of the Catholic Church, 1955).
Christian anthropology bases itself on the fundamental commandment of the Jewish Torah – love of God necessarily implies love of neighbour. “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt 22, 39). Speaking within ecclesial circles, St Paul further explicates what does love of neighbour really mean. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3,28). The equality propagated by the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, transcends nationality and genders.
In view of the Christian vision of humanity, men and women are equally created, saved and heirs of eternal life, by God, the Father of all. Also, this equality unites the healthy and the unhealthy, and forms them as one people of mutual respect and solidarity. For Pope John Paul II, this must be so since, the weak and the sick “need to love and to be loved, they need tenderness, closeness and intimacy” (message for the International Symposium on the Dignity and Rights of the Mentally Disabled Persons, of 5 January 2004, 5).
In the disintegrated, hedonistic, lonely and self-seeking postmodern society we are living in, Christianity fully integrates, incorporates, socialises and widens the horizons of the human person. It strongly promotes the message that the human being is able of entering into communion with other people. Ergo, in himself, he is intrinsically social. This is attested to by two important Church documents, Gaudium et Spes and Libertatis Conscientia, issued by the Second Vatican Council and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
For Gaudium et Spes, “by his innermost nature man is a social being, and unless he relates himself to others he can neither live nor develop his potential” (Gaudium et Spes, 12). Likewise, Libertatis Conscientia states that: “God did not create man as a ‘solitary being’ but wished him to be a ‘social being’. Social life therefore is not exterior to man: he can only grow and realise his vocation in relation with others” (Libertatis Conscientia, 32). As it turns out, socialisation is the key for the social, psychological, political, economical and spiritual well being of the human person. It is what makes him truly who he is.
Lord, you who have created the human person on your venerable and divine image, have made him little less than you, have crowned him with glory and honour, have given him dominion over the works of your hands, have put all things under his feet, and continued to be mindful of him and caring for him; make that he always keeps in his mind and heart that he finds his fulfilment, dignity and comfort when he rests completely in you. AMEN.