Being a Human

What it means to be human?

We are complicated species, capable of great good and great evil. And since our creation, we've had a lot to say about our existence.

Catholics believe being human is more so about what's happening within us, who we are at our essence and made in God's image.

We are loving, learning, mourning, celebrating, growing, longing, existing, in relationship to Gid, and to each other.

What makes human different than animals?

The writer William Hazlitt said, "Man is thd only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is stuck with difference between what things are, and what they ought to be."

The philosopher Immanuel Kant said there are three basic questions that ask people about their lives: What can I know, what can I hope, how should I live? He called them the basis of all philosophical and religious inquiry.

One way to answer these question is to know where we come from and where we're going.

Animals don't struggle with their instincts, we do, we wrestle against behaviors we believe are harmful. To be human is to wrestle with our own nature.

St. Paul himself writes about it in Romans, Chapter 7: What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way but then I act another, doing things I absolutrly despise.

That's all humans, but the good news is Catholic believe that human being were created by God on purpose and with great divine purpose.

In the Bible story of Creation, we are the only creature into which God personally breathes the breath of life.

Catholics believe that each one of us has soul, and our soul is immortal, and will now exist throughout eternity.

The church teaches that we'll have an eternal body as well. Meanwhile, our spirits wrestles with the challenges if our earthly body. It's not that we're spirits trapped in our bodies, we're spirits and body in one. But that does bring particular set of challenges.

Catholic teaching about what it means to be human begins with love, in that God is lobe and we were made by love, to love and serve God and others. We are made to love, and for love.

God gives us unique consciousness amd reason which drives us to question who is this God that made us, lives with us and calls us to knos Him as our Father.

To be human is to question.

We are the only creatures that have a deep need to express our innate dignity, as in human rights.

Catholics have always believed that God creates us to live full, joyful lives. And the key to that depends on the the right use of our freedom. Freedom requires another human attitude, free will.

For the Church, sin is understood as an abuse of our freedom, making choices that make ourselves and others miserable.