God, not us, defines man

YES, indeed! Only God fully knows who man is, who we really are. Being our creator, he is the only one who can capture our entire essence, not only in the macro level but also in the micro, not only in the general aspects of our humanity but also in the unique individual and personal peculiarities of each one of us.

The best thing that we can do to approximate who and what we really are is to go to God who has revealed himself to us through Christ who in turn has authorized the Church magisterium to teach us about who we really are.

We should try our best that we would feel the need to refer ourselves to God through Christ and through the Church whenever we try to ask or to understand the ultimate questions about ourselves, like who and what we are, what the purpose of our life here on earth is, why we should pray and offer sacrifices, etc.

Given the temper of the times that usually puts more, if not exclusive, reliance on our human estimations of things that can come about in different ways—legal, political, sociological, ideological, etc.—we have to give special effort to develop that sense of our need to refer ourselves to God-Christ-Church everytime we try to understand who and what we really are.

This is no laughing matter anymore. Right now, we can see all kinds of very questionable ideas, laws, practices, etc., and all of them are mainly due to ignoring what God through Christ and the Church is showing us. Thus, we have such things as abortion all the way to birth, same-sex unions, euthanasia, test-tube babies, etc.

Other than these, the growing alienation of a big sector of the world population from God and the Church have occasioned deep division among us, resulting many times in wars, terrorism and other forms of killings.

Of course, there are those who would question whether it is practicable and useful to refer and to defer to God-Christ-Church. Can we really know God, they would ask. Is Christ still relevant today? And the Church, is it not just another human institution, afflicted at the moment with scandals?

I believe the only way to resolve all these questions is to pray a lot, because more than reasoning and all kinds of explanations, which of course should be done, it is faith that is truly needed. Without faith, no amount of discussion can be of use.

We are dealing here not only with natural realities but also and mainly spiritual and supernatural ones. For us to effectively grapple with that level of reality, we need faith and not only our reason and intellect and our other human powers.

Yes, it’s true that God and the reality of Christ and the Church cannot be fully understood by us, but we have enough data, so to speak, to enable us to enter into a meaningful relationship of knowing and loving God and following his will.

This condition of our relationship with God should not stop us from actively knowing and loving God. On the contrary, it should spur us to know and love him more and more, using all the means that God himself has made available for us. And these means are precisely in the Church.

Oftentimes, we can only echo these words of Psalm 8: “What is man that you are mindful of him, human being that you care for him? You have made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet…” (4-6)

Yes, man is a deep mystery, but that condition should help us to get closer to God, not farther from him.