About this ebook
Attempts to simplify this ambivalence by choosing one side or the other must be avoided: we cannot censor fragility and natural limitations in order to exalt only grandeur and strength, perhaps due to a blind faith in the results of technological research and scientific discoveries; but neither should we resign ourselves to the limitations and fragilities of life, forgetting the potential inherent in our intelligent and spiritual nature. Since each of us is entrusted with the task of shaping our identity responsibly, it is essential not to oversimplify what it means to be human.
Being a human person, endowed with infinite dignity, is not something we have built or acquired, but rather the fruit of a free gift that precedes us. It is not a gift we have simply received in the past, but it remains a gift in every circumstance of our existence, forever, and becomes an irreplaceable task. Appropriating this gift and shaping one's own identity is the adventure of life: a task that must be undertaken freely from within the relationships in which we come to know ourselves, others, and reality. In this way, we can offer our original and unique contribution to human history, responding to our vocation. The gift is received in a “we,” in a community to which each person belongs and in which they grow.
Religious experience, particularly the Christian faith, proposes to inhabit this ambivalence between the greatness and the limitations of humanity without oversimplification, interpreting it in light of the original and foundational relationship with God. In Psalm 8, the one praying asks in a heartfelt dialogue with God: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:5). He responds by praising the greatness that God has bestowed upon him in his creation: “You 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” (Psalm 8:6-7). The Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ casts its definitive light on this paradox, thanks to which both the limit, finitude and transience, as well as the disorder introduced by sin, are overcome by the work of grace, through the gift of divine filiation, which makes us sharers in the life of the Risen One, according to the Father's design and thanks to the renewal of all things in the Spirit.
