> [[itc-qvh-02|← Previous]] | [[quo-vadis-humanitas-toc|TOC]] | [[itc-qvh-04|Next →]] # Chapter II. Life as Vocation: The Human Person as an Agent in History 63\. The prospect of a *transhumanist* anthropological transformation, as well as dreams of *posthumanism*, may seem like a remote possibility, like an exaggeration far removed from the real condition of humanity. In fact, the Covid-19 pandemic has greatly diminished confidence in unlimited technological progress, and it is better understood that humanity needs above all a solidarity that cares for everyone and thanks to which each people can live in peace. Yet *transhumanism’s* demands for progress, especially when they encourage the drive towards *posthumanism*, exert a strong impact on the common imagination and risk acting as a sort of mass distraction from humanity’s most urgent problems, diverting resources and energy from the daily struggles for the possible good of so much of suffering humanity, on the one hand, and favouring distortions in the perception of the real conditions of experience, on the other. 64\. It is therefore necessary to recall some fundamental dimensions of human experience that are compromised or overshadowed by a certain idea of technological progress. We shall focus first on two constitutive dimensions: the *historical* dimension of human experience, which requires knowing how to inhabit *time* and *space*; and the *intersubjective* dimension, which brings into play the sense of belonging to a family, a community, a people and to the whole of humanity, where we are ‘all brothers and sisters’. We shall conclude the chapter by placing these dimensions of human experience within an overall proposal of life as *an integral vocation*, in line with recent indications from the conciliar and pontifical Magisterium. **1\. The historical dimension of human experience: time and space** 65\. We place ourselves first and foremost in the context of the constitutive historical-temporal dimension of human experience. Historical consciousness is a fundamental factor in the construction of identity, both of the individual and of a people, understood in their differences but also in their connection. Human beings are historical and cultural subjects, capable of transforming nature, cultivating their humanity and giving meaning to history. The notion of history as a temporal process moving towards a promised and hoped-for future is a precious legacy of Judaism and Christianity. In the light of revelation, Christian theology has reflected on the anthropological and salvific meaning of personal time and the history of humanity. Historical consciousness is a constitutive element of the Christian faith, which encounters the God who brings salvation within the historical journey of a people. For this reason, revelation also shows the mysterious and indelible value of the present, understood as a privileged and unrepeatable moment of the anticipation of eternity in time. At the same time, it becomes a critique of various reductionisms concerning time, the present and memory, as well as eschatology. 66\. Peoples are subjects of particular cultures and histories, which are related to a greater or lesser extent to world history.\[66\] Therefore, the human family, the subject of universal history, presents itself as a plural unity extended in space and time. History has meaning because events are signs that embody meanings and values through which people realise and express themselves. This symbolic or ‘sacramental’ structure of historical events invites us to seek their meaning not only by considering their origin or proximate causes, but also their ultimate purpose. Thus, history takes place in processes that transform the conditions of experience and become public events with more general effects. Today, historical processes are undergoing a clear acceleration and universalisation:\[67\] the human community is rushing towards a common destiny, in which there is an ever-increasing interdependence between national histories and world history. This intertwining requires us to articulate well the value of local cultures, with their processes and times, and the meaning of universal fraternity.\[68\] 1.1. *Living time with a healthy sense of history* 67\. For human beings, history is an indispensable dimension of their being and acting. They assume time by way of an intelligent and spiritual interiority, bringing together the dimensions of the flow of time in the distention of the soul and thus coming to experience reality.\[69\] Memory, understood as the recovery of the past in the present, as well as the horizon of hope for eternity, open to the future, provides the context for discovering the meaning of life and for an impetus of human initiative that enlarges the horizons of action. 68\. One of the first repercussions of recent technological developments concerns the experience of time.\[70\] Today, there is a loss of the sense of history and a reduction of experience to the fleeting moment, together with an ambiguous focus on the present. Digital culture tends to dissolve the ‘anamnestic culture’ of history and transform the living culture of memory and hope into a postmodern culture of a present closed in on itself. The organisation of information on the internet is concerned with collecting and organising immense amounts of data based on probability calculations, rather than with seeking hypotheses of understanding or explanation. Even the question of the foundation of experience, the explanatory cause or a founding meaning, is now considered a matter superseded by the analysis of connections between data. Instead of living memories and traditions forged by memories, the processing of available data through computerisation takes over, data that can then be retrieved at any time. But computers do not remember; they merely store data. This can result in the elimination of the consciousness of time and the transposition of different times into the space of an indefinite contemporaneity, leading to what has been described as a spatialisation of the world. Through technology, we can presume to overcome the power of time (fleeting and at the same time open to eternity) and make all times contemporary. But a present that no longer knows the past no longer has a future either. And the lack of an end, which opens us up to eternity, becomes a ‘bad infinity’. 69\. All this weakens people’s confidence in their ability to interpret and shape the world, which escapes practical understanding and social control and is left in the hands of gigantic bureaucracies overloaded with information thanks to complex, interdependent and ungovernable technological systems, by which individuals often feel besieged and threatened. Total dependence on these complex and sophisticated systems, over which the individual has no influence, creates feelings of powerlessness and pushes people to close themselves off in limited and protected horizons of meaning and life.\[71\] Reality becomes a connection, through which one enters a network of contacts and encounters that require agility, speed and immediate reactions rather than reflection and critical thinking. In this scenario, universal narratives and stories based on lasting choices are less interesting than assuming identities that weigh light and are multidimensional. 70\. It is not surprising that (post)modern culture tends to cultivate the oblivion of being, memory and eternal destiny. In such a landscape, human beings are less and less their own memory and more and more their own unlimited experiment.\[72\] Among the various reasons for this ‘cultural amnesia’ we can list the one found in the biblical story: human beings in prosperity forget their God and the history they have lived with Him (cf. *Jud* 2:10; *Dt* 4:23, 30; *Lk* 12:31-21), disregarding the divine commandment that commits them to care for the poor and marginalised. Added to this is the impact of a scientistic mentality, which imagines science as the possible solution to every problem, capable of healing wounds and thus freeing us from the pain of memory. A third factor is resignation to one’s own limited fragility, devoid of great hopes, which becomes a simple exhortation to ‘move forward’ without criteria, as if the only important thing were to advance, to proceed even without a specific goal: an emancipatory consciousness draws from the past a minimal memory as a stimulus to go further, without desiring a goal, whether immanent or much less transcendent. Furthermore, this form of amnesia leaves room for ideological reconstructions of the past or forms of revisionism and denialism, which seek to legitimise power games or justify painful conflicts. In reality, we cannot build a future without a solid memory of the history from which we come and which has generated us, nor without hope for the future. 71\. These situations are also the result of a globalised economy, which favours a single, mass-produced cultural model, in which powerful forces assert themselves, protecting their own interests at the expense of weaker cultures. The result is the loss of the integral meaning of history.\[73\] Therefore, there prevail dynamics of standardisation in what we might call *false cultures* of ‘consumerism’, ‘waste’, ‘walls’, ‘isolation and withdrawal’ or even the spread of an ‘empty culture, focused on the immediate and lacking a common project’.\[74\] These false cultures are at work both in populisms that disfigure the term ‘people’, confining it to a logic of closure, and in ‘individualistic liberal visions’, which reject the very category of people and the positive enhancement of the community and the cultural ties it contains.\[75\] The result of these cultural forms, in the context of a globalised contemporary digital world, is further disorientation. Compared to these false cultures, the Gospel presents itself as a kind of counterculture, not in the sense that the inspiration of the Gospel imposes its own unique hegemonic culture, but in the sense that it values and promotes all cultures, or dimensions of them, that are authentically human. 72\. In order to cope with this experience of the horizontal acceleration of historical time, it is necessary to recover the origin and ultimate goal of history, as they can be experienced in the present, in order to understand their true meaning. The encounter between human time and God’s eternity in Jesus Christ freely offers a meaning of history that corresponds deeply to the expectations of the human experience of time, without detracting from the intersection of the three dimensions of past experience, present initiative and future expectation, in the horizon of eternity that qualifies them. 73\. The Christian experience of time offers the coordinates of a salvation that takes place in history, insofar as it places the fullness of time within a specific historical context, in a present charged with eternity, thanks to the incarnation of the Son of God (cf. *Gal* 4:4-6). In this way, it opens historical processes to the expectation of a promised fulfilment, which realises the needs of the human heart of every age in an unimaginable way (cf. *Rev* 21-22).\[76\] It corresponds to a need of the historical consciousness of peoples to be able to read events in a more comprehensive and meaningful context, one that is capable of understanding historical events in the unity of a universal process endowed with meaning, while respecting particular histories and grasping unity in the diversity of the manifold. The eschatological fulfilment promised in Jesus Christ in no way detracts from the value of concrete historical events in the present, but illumines their meaning, reactivating the character of experience that brings promise and with it the active expectation of a new world.\[77\] This is possible because the end of history does not coincide with its conclusion, but refers to a final goal that transcends historical events from within and directs them towards a new fulfilment, towards which everything converges. 74\. The history of salvation is not presented simply as enclosed in a particular history of its own, alongside universal history, because God’s concrete saving action in history is articulated *with the cultural movements of peoples* in a unity that maintains the distinction: ‘The Spirit’s presence and activity affect not only individuals but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions. Indeed, the Spirit is at the origin of the noble ideals and undertakings which benefit humanity on its journey through history: “The Spirit of God with marvellous foresight directs the course of the ages and renews the face of the earth.”’\[78\] The relationship between God and his people, but also with humanity and the whole of creation, comes about through the gifts of the Spirit and the Word, which do not simply rain down from above, but germinate within the human being who welcomes them and with responsibility nurtures them so that they bear fruit (cf. *Is* 55:10-11; *Mt* 25:14-30). In this way, the divine opens up to the human the space for its own fulfilment, re-establishing human beings in a new and surprising communion, which neither annuls nor absorbs humanity, but sustains it in its historical fulfilment. The unifying of historical processes in Christ does not detract from the substance of local histories and cultures, nor does it standardise their different riches by flattening them to the interests of a few or to the laws of the market or the communicative logic of the global digital world. 75\. It is an experience full of joy that Mary expresses in the *Magnificat* (cf. *Lk* 1:46-55). This prayer reveals Mary’s own awareness of history: in her, as the Mother of Christ, is present the entire economy of salvation in which the eternal is united in a new way with time.\[79\] The *Magnificat* echoes in Mary’s personal experience that of the entire people of God in the history of salvation.\[80\] We find in it another kind of experience of time, one that is visited by God’s grace, in which Mary’s obedience to the Angel’s announcement opens up the fullness of grace that expanded her present (“The Almighty has done great things for me”) to a positive future (“From now on, all generations will call me blessed”), in conscious remembrance of God’s saving action and its style of acting (“From generation to generation his mercy is on those who fear him. He has shown the strength of his arm. \[...\] He has lifted up the lowly...”).\[81\] 1.2. *Inhabiting space: from one’s own space to the ‘thresholds’* 76\. Human beings inhabit space in different ways: they are both ‘domestic beings’, living in a home, and ‘political beings’, putting down roots and organising themselves in a city and a homeland, and finally ‘cosmopolitan beings’, situated in the world. The human dwelling encompasses this triangle formed by the home, as the sphere of family and nature; by the city and the people/nation, as the space of history and culture; and by the whole world, as the horizon of belonging to human nature. Local and global are constitutive dimensions of human experience, now transformed by the processes of globalisation, as can be seen, for example, in megacities and in changes in mobility.\[82\] 77\. A significant phenomenon is the organisation of urban space in megacities. We are living in the‘ *Urban Age* ’, a new moment in human history. The formation of huge cities is a phenomenon of our time, which began in the mid-twentieth century. Since the early years of the twenty-first century, more than half of the world’s population has been living in cities, leading to a shift from rural to urban contexts, typical of today’s media and information culture. The type of life in which human beings seek fulfilment has changed greatly in these ‘metropolitan regions’, as Paul VI called them, which unite centres and peripheries in immense agglomerations, with large suburban complexes often lacking essential services.\[83\] 78\. Today’s changes in mobility also have an impact on the human experience of space. The possibility already mentioned of shortening distances with faster means of transport, reorganising the space of life (work, home, friendships, school) but also the spread and distribution of goods, with the possibility of always having products from different parts of the world and distant countries available, has led to a ‘de-territorialisation’ of personal identity and cultures. Even food is no longer linked to its natural environment of origin and its seasons. Thus, customs, ways of life and values are in constant tension between a defined territorial belonging and a borderless planetary civilisation. We are increasingly citizens of the world. A certain global culture, made up of undifferentiated and universal values, goods and commodities that belong to everyone and no one, increasingly determines the way we dress, eat, entertain ourselves, celebrate and relax, according to the offerings of the leisure industry. The places of meeting and transit where contacts are established are increasingly anonymous and uniform ‘non-places’ (stations, airports, large shopping centres), expressions of an artificial world rather than human and cultural environments defined by a precise history and identity. 79\. In this type of space, people risk moving like nomads wandering in search of new experiences. Thus, the figure of the pilgrim is lost, who sets out on a journey leaving his or her home and his possessions behind, in search of the true homeland in which to live, the promised land to which God calls them. Moreover, pilgrims do not lose their relationship with their own land: ‘The solution is not an openness that spurns its own richness. Just as there can be no dialogue with “others” without a sense of our own identity, so there can be no openness between peoples except on the basis of love for one’s own land, one’s own people, one’s own cultural roots.’\[84\] 80\. The global organisation of space does not in itself make us more hospitable and open to others. On the contrary, it often leads to strong identity reactions, which tend to define one’s ‘own space’ by creating insurmountable boundaries that establish clear separations between ‘us and you’, one’s own world and that of others. It is thought-provoking that the first impact of theories of ‘multiculturalism’ has regard precisely for the perception of space and the unity of the world we inhabit. One can comprehend the alternative metaphors associated positively with this discovery: ‘expanding spaces’, ‘making room for others’, ‘expanding boundaries’; or, conversely, ‘defending one’s boundaries’, ‘erecting barriers’, ‘defining one's own space’. The imaginary that dominates so much contemporary culture is that of an individual or a people at the centre of a ‘sphere of their own’, in relation to which the other or the stranger appears as a secondary determination, on the periphery or at the boundaries. 81\. In discovering the other, the different and even the stranger, it is easier today to awaken the perception that ‘no one is master in their own house’, since otherness has been with us from the beginning, it is with us ‘at home’. This means that the other is not a derivative of one’s own, but is co-original. Unfortunately, ‘what is one’s own’ is often defined by processes of exclusion towards the other, that is, by creating boundaries. This applies to the consciousness of one’s own self as well as to cultures. We must therefore not forget that at origin there is a common humanity that is an intertwining, a network in which the self and the stranger, the self and the other, are co-implicated.\[85\] The difficulty in accepting this original intertwining in a logic of encounter and hospitality should make us reflect on the functioning of globalisation, which seems to open up common spaces for encounter, but in reality allows feelings of ‘invasion’ to grow, revealing the perception of the other as a threat. 82\. The Christian faith shifts the axis of the experience of space: ‘Christians are indistinguishable from other human beings either by nationality, language or customs. They do not live in special cities, speak a strange language, or follow a peculiar way of life. \[...\] They live in both Greek and barbarian cities, as it happens, and while they follow the customs of the place in their dress, food, and other aspects of life, they propose a wonderful and, as everyone has admitted, incredible way of life. They live in their own countries, but as if they were foreigners; they respect and fulfil all the duties of citizens, and bear all burdens as if they were foreigners; every foreign region is their homeland, yet every homeland is foreign to them.’\[86\] Christians do not claim a space of their own, except in the service of mission and worship, and in any case their space is already inhabited by a radical otherness – that of God – which can also assume, in Christ, the figure of the stranger who challenges, questioning what was taken for granted and tranquil. 83\. Rethinking ‘one’s own space’ implies redefining boundaries as ‘thresholds’, that is, areas that bring people into contact, spaces of transition. Those who cross the threshold of another human experience do not simply arrive in another place, but are called to ‘become an other’. No one can master this difference and mediate between cultures from a neutral position. The challenge, then, is to expand our boundaries in order to be open to the call of the other. In this sense, the parable of the Good Samaritan (cf. *Lk* 10:1-15) offers an unsurpassed model of the culture of ‘becoming neighbour’ and of encounter.\[87\] 84\. The presence of Jesus Christ, in whom the beginning, the centre and the end of history are gathered together (cf. *Rev* 22:13), opens up the space of life for peoples and individuals, keeping it open as a welcoming place for differences, without walls or closures. Indeed, it regenerates time, which lives in a present full of salvific meaning (*kairos*), while still on a journey, open to a transcendent future fulfilment that will realise the promise inscribed in its origin. **2\. Relationships and the sense of belonging: intersubjectivity** 85\. Intersubjectivity, that is, belonging to a family, a people and a tradition, is situated in this space-time context. These ways of belonging, in which personal identity begins and is shaped in history, constitute almost a barrier to the spread of a uniform globalisation, which does not always help to form authentic bonds: ‘As society becomes ever more globalized, it brings us closer together, but it does not make us brothers and sisters.’\[88\] To speak of intersubjectivity is to emphasise how human life immediately implies a community horizon: the life of the individual must be situated within the framework of relationships that form a community. These relationships, which constitute personal identity, are structured within the family, within a people with its traditions, and within a broader belonging to common humanity. 86\. *The family* is the original place of intersubjectivity precisely because it is the place of the gift and acceptance of the miracle of life, which is realised in every new birth. Intersubjectivity arises precisely where life is given, not produced, much less self-produced. At the origin of every life there is an unexpected gift, in an experience of original passivity, by which we find ourselves in existence, preceded and welcomed by the desire of others. Today’s dominant culture does not pay sufficient attention to the fact that we ‘are born’, and *transhumanism*, and even more so *posthumanism*, forget that the human being is first and foremost a child, who discovers that he or she has been generated and given to himself or herself in the wonderful adventure of being and growing up. 87\. The family as the original community finds in *the child*, and precisely in the child’s reception of and coming to self-awareness in the smiling gift of the parents, a particularly significant realisation of human existence that no *transhumanism* or *posthumanism* can make us forget. Life as the fullness of being and promise finds its point of fulfilment in *the child precisely as one who is filial, son or daughter*.\[89\] In fact, the articulation of the human in the love between man and woman, and above all in the becoming one of man and woman in the fruitfulness of the child, shows forth the transparency of being as a gift from God. In the child as filial, a reflection of this origin is manifested, with its accompanying wonder and fullness, trust and bliss, gift and gratitude. It is this nexus of bonds and feelings that constitutes the complex interweaving of the beginning, the mirror of the origin in which filial truth is preserved. The human being as filial child is the anthropological correlate of being as gift and love, its splendid attestation. It is precisely this fullness of being in the simplicity of the child’s gaze that is the secret of the intuitive, but also rational, ability to unify reality in its dimensions of necessity and freedom, of spirit and nature, in the embrace of love. 88\. The child is a sign of filial humanity understood as dwelling in a fullness: precisely because the child is not thrown into existence, but welcomed and surrounded by parental care, he or she does not have to be conquered in an effort of continuous development, but is received in an attitude of gratitude. The child is not a void to be filled, but a fullness that is given and promised, to be accompanied in the adventure of giving shape to existence in the experiences of life. Filial identity is the object of recognition mediated by family care in the home: in this space of life, the passivity of coming into being is the condition of freedom to act, and dependence on love is the condition of autonomy. This is why reason develops in the child against the backdrop of an original unity of reality, as an articulation of being, goodness and beauty. Thought has an affective root in its origin. This condition is to be rediscovered, not overcome, in an exchange in which the child receives the love of his or her parents and with their child they rediscover their own filial being. 89\. The desire to enhance the human should therefore focus less on planning a transhuman that goes beyond the state of (having been) children, and rather seek to guarantee every family the social and economic conditions to welcome and accompany this ‘miracle of the beginning’ in a context of life favourable to the birth and growth of children. 90\. Secondly, we must emphasise the human value of belonging to a *people*, with its traditions, and also the theological value of belonging to the People of God in history. The category of ‘people’ in this twofold secular and religious sense takes on significant weight as a subject of a development that is fully human. ‘People’ is a historical category that identifies a communal subject in a given territory, formed over time through processes of integration and with reference to a culture.\[90\] Belonging to a people is a complex human reality, made up of existential and emotional sharing.\[91\] It is realised through the sharing of a culture, that is, a set of values, practices, customs and habits, which allows people to recognise each other, to live normally in a common geographical environment, with a particular language and history. Being part of a people means inhabiting a space together as a sphere of relationships. Each person seeks fulfilment in a set of relationships within a given situation, which shapes their mentality and the way they perceive themselves. There is no identity without belonging – even if experienced critically – to a people. 91\. We thus also rediscover the value of *the land* as a people’s symbolic place of culture and identity. This experience is opposed to the globalist vision that cancels out differences and identities linked to a particular context. The bond with place offers an opportunity for people to meet and build social friendships, starting not from abstract ideas but from shared areas of life and values in the local area (home, work, celebrations). It is precisely this life of a people with a situated identity that is found in contact with other peoples, where there is a calling to an exchange, under the rule of creativity, with different cultures and in a dynamic process, often even one that is conflictual, which is to be taken up and transformed into a mutual exchange of gifts. There is no openness between peoples except in love for one’s own land, one’s own people and one’s own culture.\[92\] 92\. In belonging to a people, it is necessary to avoid the twofold risk of seeking unifying factors only in ethnicity, language or the defence of territory, understood as a closed and exclusive space, or of dissolving the identity of the people in an anonymous and globalised cosmopolitan culture, which exposes them to the laws of the market and finance, without concern for protecting the common good of society. The fundamental bond is represented by culture, that is, by a certain way of life, which encompasses reference to shared values and therefore oriented towards unity in diversity, which allows us to go beyond conflicts and move towards bonds of fraternity open to all. 93\. Within this dynamic search for unity among all peoples in dialogue with one another, we find the historical journey of *the people of God*, which is the Church, the people of God in which the Body of Christ is historically expressed.\[93\] As such, the people of God is not based on territorial, sociological or institutional dynamics, but on faith understood as the bedrock of religious, existential and cultural meaning. She therefore promotes a culture of encounter, since the Church cannot be separated from the journey of humanity. She accompanies the history of peoples, maintaining the tensity towards universal communion in Christ, the mediator of a new life, stronger than evil and death, but also stronger than conflicts and divisions. This tensity towards communion does not lose sight of differences, but keeps them open to a greater unified project. This is what happened at Pentecost (cf. *Acts* 2:1-13), when the descent of the Spirit made the Apostles a plural unity, capable of speaking all languages, a ‘People of peoples’ (cf. *Acts* 15:14-18). The Spirit of God acts in the different cultures and histories of peoples with a universalising but not homogenising work: ‘With your blood you have redeemed for God people of every tribe, language, people and nation.’ (*Rev* 5:9; cf. also 7:9; 11:9; 13:7; 14:6) 94\. The insertion of the people of God into the historical journeys of various peoples highlights the challenge of reconciling the particular histories of peoples with the global development of humanity. There is a growing awareness that, on one side, the common good of individual peoples cannot be safeguarded solely through local political strategies, which may be governed by a logic of isolation and closure. Rather, it requires the convergence and harmonisation of local projects with global dynamics that transcend the boundaries of individual countries. But such a synthesis also requires the mediation of international institutions that are sufficiently authoritative and just, and therefore capable of reconciling the good of individual peoples with the common good of humanity as a whole, for the effective protection of what are now called ‘common goods’ (land, water and air). It is precisely in the crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic that we have experienced what it now means ‘to be all in the same boat’, engaged in a common struggle for the good of all. 95\. There is a need for ongoing critical discernment of historical and political choices affecting the human family, from the perspective of the responsibility assumed by various international organisations, as well as by the Church with her social doctrine, in order to clarify the question of who is qualified to decide on the common good and the destiny of all.\[94\] In particular, the global economic and monetary systems require, on the one hand, responsibility on the part of financial institutions, which must be attentive to the real economy rather than to the logic of profit, and on the other, they must not lose sight of an ethical approach that is sensitive to the dignity of the person, the common good in a spirit of solidarity, and the well-being of societies, especially the most fragile ones.\[95\] 96\. It is essential to value the unity of the ‘human family’, journeying through history, in reference to the present and eschatologically to the total Christ, in whom the goal and direction of the journey is fully revealed: the communion of Trinitarian love, the fulfilment of the redemption of the human family. This is a journey that takes place in an Easter rhythm, in which what is in the human heart is revealed at the foot of the Cross, as it is freed from everything that hinders communion with God, with creation and with our brothers and sisters. It is precisely in reference to Christ crucified and risen that we can understand the grace of the time given to us, the most just way of inhabiting space and living the quality of relationships in which we become ourselves, and the belonging in which we find the authentic meaning of life. 97\. In contrast to any *transhumanist* triumphalism or radical pessimism of *posthumanism*, reference to the mystery of the Cross draws our attention to history from the perspective of *the victims*. The true *pathos* of history lies not only in humanity’s great achievements, but also in the silent sufferings of so many people throughout the generations and throughout the world. History is made up of action and passion, and this attention to the dimension of suffering gives concrete form to the Christian vision of history, which cannot be reduced to an anonymous and inexorable process of development that tends towards an immanent progress, which risks trampling over the corpses of the defeated and abandoning the weak. There can be no human fulfilment of history without justice for the victims, nor any sense of the historical process that does not take into account the needs of the weakest. The true and decisive meaning of justice is at stake. In Christ, we are authorised to look with hope to the destiny that awaits us, without forgetting the victims of history, but rather gathering together their cry. 98\. In Jesus crucified, God takes on the full weight and provocation of innocent suffering with respect to a hope for full justice, connected to faith in eternal life.\[96\] Faith in Christ offers a hope that is already credible in life, transforming it, and also confronts death, transcending it. The Church, as a communion of saints, uniting those who are already fully in the Kingdom of God and those who are still pilgrims on this earth, is a community that transcends death without abandoning history and offers a universal hope that responds to the thirst for full justice and eternal life. **3\. The integral vocation to fulfilment in love** 99\. Personal existence is situated in a specific history, time and space, and awakens to self-awareness within relationships that express a belonging which precedes and grounds it. In this way, it rediscovers its original meaning as a *call* to life: ‘This refers us to an elementary and fundamental truth, which we need to rediscover in all its beauty: *the life of the human being is vocation*. Let us not forget this: the anthropological dimension, which underlies every calling within the community, which is associated with an essential characteristic of the human being as such: namely, that *the human being is himself or herself a vocation*.’\[97\] 100\. The existence of each human being is properly understood when it is recognised as the fruit of the Father’s creative love, according to the dynamic of a *call* to life and happiness. Every human being comes into being because he or she has been thought of and willed by God, who loved each one even before forming them in the womb (cf. *Jer* 1:5; *Isa* 49:1, 5; *Gal* 1:15). This divine vocation explains at its root the mystery of human life, inasmuch as it is a mystery of predilection and absolute gratuitousness. Therefore, even though human beings are finite, they cannot be imprisoned in a mere creaturely dimension, and no definition can capture and exhaust them completely.\[98\] The eternal love of the Father excludes the possibility that the existence of persons is a result of necessity or chance: every human existence has infinite value in itself. From this perspective, it is understandable that human beings cannot be subjected to any exclusively political, economic or social measure that diminishes their infinite dignity.\[99\] 101\. The perception that life is a gift from God inspires gratitude in people, who respond to the call by accepting the ‘invitation to be part of a love story’.\[100\] Divine love, which created human beings, ensures that no one should feel ‘superfluous’ in the world, since everyone is called to respond according to a plan designed by God for them. Life as a vocation, understood in a broad sense, is proper to every human being and derives from the simple fact of our filial existence. As an expression of the providential mind of the Creator, the divine plan is addressed to every living being in different ways.\[101\] Christians recognise that they are called to ‘missionary service to others’\[102\] to the point of being able to say of themselves: “I am a mission.”\[103\] Human beings, precisely because they are called, are true interlocutors of God; they do not receive the gift with mere passivity but, by virtue of the gift, become free agents, capable of offering an increase in good not only to other human beings but to the same divine economy. 102\. Life understood as a vocation is revealed existentially in prayer. Augustine was well aware of how much vocation implies the call that precedes human beings, questions them and gives them a future: ‘Do not forsake my invocation now, you who anticipated me before I invoked you, insisting with increasing and manifold appeals that I hear you from afar and turn back, calling on you who called me (*vocantem me invocarem te*).’\[104\] Prayer is an attitude that qualifies humanity. In its various forms of praise, intercession, recognition of goodness and thanksgiving, prayer is rooted in a profound gesture of trust and constant supplication to God, who brings us into being and accompanies and guides us on our journey through life. Especially in the religions which trace their histories back to Abraham, it expresses a personal relationship with God, who is addressed as ‘You’: ‘a popular prayer, directed like an arrow towards the heart of Christ, says simply: “Jesus, I trust in you.”’\[105\] In Christian prayer, this relationship is realised as participation in the relationship of the Son Jesus with his Father in the Holy Spirit. This is the expression of a human attitude that entrusts itself beyond itself, without having to dissolve or project itself. It is no coincidence that there is no easy reference to prayer in the various *transhumanist* and even less so in *posthumanist* manifestos. 103\. Today, especially in the West, there is often favoured a ‘culture of non-vocation’, which in fact also underlies contemporary anthropological challenges. In particular, with regard to the education of young people, it is not difficult to see how their understanding of life often lacks openness to an ultimate meaning, both in terms of orientation and in terms of constitutive relationships. They do not know or recognise that they are called. Their plans for the future are limited to a logic that reduces the future, at best, to the choice of a profession, economic security or the satisfaction of certain needs: ‘These are chosen with no reference to the mystery or the transcendent, and perhaps, too, with little responsibility in relation to life, one’s own and that of others, of life received as a gift to be generated in others.’\[106\] The prevailing anthropological model seems to be that of the ‘person without a vocation’, whose impact on the perception of life is to feel lost in the drama of an existence that finds no meaning and is without hope for the future. It is the invitation to a ‘life as a vocation’ that can open up a horizon that goes beyond any claim to find an ephemeral ‘life project’ that is entirely self-founded and planned by the individual, which paradoxically reflects conformity with the dominant mentality. 104\. The proposal of life as a vocation can and must give rise to a positive ‘culture of vocation’ as an adequate understanding of the process of maturation of the identity of individuals and peoples. Precisely for the youngest, the culture of vocation opens up the realistic possibility, because it is rooted in God’s call, of following a path ‘born of freedom, enthusiasm, creativity and new horizons, while at the same time cultivating the roots that nourish and sustain us.’\[107\] In contexts favourable to a vocational upbringing, it is easier for an attitude of gratitude for the gifts received to emerge, which gives rise to a sense of responsibility and gratuitous self-giving in favour of others, especially those most in need. 105\. In these thoughts we find Mary’s inner attitude: grateful for God’s gaze upon her, faithful amid fear and turmoil, she courageously embraced her vocation and made of her life an eternal song of praise to the Lord.\[108\] In the figure of Mary, we see an eminent realisation of life as a vocation, understood as a process, typical of unique and free people, to be lived in gratitude and trust rather than as a project of self-realisation. Mary lived this process herself, facing her questions and difficulties when she was very young. She knew how to look with her heart and dialogue with the things she experienced, meditating on them over time.\[109\] --- ![[maps/bibliography#^biblio-itc-qvh]]