> [[itc-qvh-03|← Previous]] | [[quo-vadis-humanitas-toc|TOC]] | [[itc-qvh-05|Next →]] # Chapter III. Charity as Vocation: The Human Person as Giver of Self **IN THE FACE OF SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY** 106\. Rediscovering life as a vocation means responding to a gift that calls us to shape our own identity, taking on the task of becoming ourselves and transforming society and the world according to God’s plan. It is not simply a matter of making plans, preparing for the future, finding a job to earn a living and improving the world. The serious question in life, understood as a vocation, is to realise one’s personal identity as a gift for others. 107\. Let us now focus on the category of human ‘identity’. It has been classically defined through the categories of ‘substance/nature’ and ‘person’, to indicate what remains identical to itself over time and ensures the basis of the ontological and moral dignity of every human being.\[110\] On this basis, we shall be guided more specifically by the concern to offer discernment of current phenomena and their impact on the future of humanity. How can we succeed in discerning an ‘authentic human identity’ in this cultural and social age? What are the criteria for this discernment? We wish to emphasise in particular the twofold characteristic of human identity, in that it implies both a gift and a task, which requires us to hold together various dimensions in order to highlight the unique position of human beings in the cosmos. **1\. Personal identity: a gift and a task** 108\. The challenges arising from advances in biotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence, but also from the widespread cultural imaginary, call into question the basic experience that human beings have of themselves in concrete terms, that is, the experience in which they shape their identity.\[111\] Yet the answer to questions such as ‘Who am I and who are we? Who do I want to be and who do we want to be? What do I want to do with myself and what do we want to do with ourselves as a human family?’ is constitutive of the experience of all persons who are committed to giving themselves an identity in a dynamic, unique and concrete history, and in a set of constitutive relationships to which they correspond. 1.1. *The task of becoming oneself: gift, love, freedom* 109\. At the origin of this journey is a gift that ignites in the heart the search for happiness, that is, for life in its fullness. The gift, once recognised and accepted, becomes the task in which each person discovers that they are entrusted to themselves. Human beings cannot be happy without knowledge of who they are. One cannot desire anything, not even happiness, unless one discovers that one is authorised to desire oneself unconditionally by virtue of a given recognition: ‘Our dignity is bestowed upon us by God; it is neither claimed nor deserved. Every human being is loved and willed by God and, thus, has an inviolable dignity.’\[112\] Therefore, when human persons seek to shape their identity, they must be aware of the ‘exalted dignity proper to human persons, since they stand above all things, and their rights and duties are universal and inviolable.’\[113\] This dignity is based on creation in the image and likeness of God, which is ultimately in the image of the Son, who, in his incarnation, shared our nature and elevated it to union with the divine life, and in his resurrection inserted our nature into a destiny of eternal life in communion with the Trinity.\[114\] 110\. The most fitting atmosphere in which to develop one’s identity is that of love, beginning with the family, which is the origin of our existence. In fact, many forms of poverty, including material poverty, arise from the root of ‘isolation, from not being loved or from difficulties in being able to love’.\[115\] According to the dynamic of asymmetrical reciprocity between gift and response that shapes our identity, taking responsibility for one’s life means recognising that one is entrusted to oneself (self-possession) by an unsolicited gift that must be recognised, accepted and desired as a good for oneself (assent). This recognition of the gift that precedes us is not just a matter of pure reason. It involves an affective dynamic: we love ourselves because we are wanted and loved, and we feel wanted and loved. This process is possible when we find ourselves in relation to a reality with meaning and promise, full of positive significance to be discovered in wonder. This is recognition, just as necessary as when often sought after in other ways in the infosphere. The world is not a collection of things to be exploited and objects to be manipulated, but a dwelling place in which one can find one’s own place.\[116\] Not infrequently, the rejection of God’s love, determined by various factors (psychological, relational, cultural) that make it difficult to perceive the original gift, also compromises the processes of forming personal identity. The love received and accepted is the driving force behind any process of self-acceptance and growth, and finds its origin in God himself, eternal love.\[117\] 111\. The realisation of this identity, in its ontological consistency, is entrusted to freedom: ‘Every individual possesses an inalienable and intrinsic dignity from the beginning of his or her existence as an irrevocable gift. However, the choice to express that dignity and manifest it to the full or to obscure it depends on each person’s free and responsible decision. \[...\] the image of God is entrusted to human freedom’.\[118\] A person who renounces the search for truth and goodness may come to think that he or she has no identity to preserve and build through truly free and conscious choices. If we then consider all the individual and social dimensions of human beings situated in history, it follows that ‘the proper exercise of personal freedom requires specific conditions of an economic, social, juridical, political and cultural order. \[...\] Real and historical freedom always needs to be “liberated”.’\[119\] St Paul’s teaching challenges us in this regard: ‘Christ has set us free for freedom! Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened once again by a yoke of slavery \[...\] For you, brothers and sisters, have been called to freedom.’ (*Gal* 5:1, 13) 1.2. *The complexity of identity* 112\. However, this is not a simple process. Identity is complex, consisting of various dimensions. Human beings are aware that their identities, while individual and non-transferable, are also relational, shaped by the communities to which they belong and by the circumstances of their lives.\[120\] Therefore, identity is always something received and, at the same time, something realised and developed by each person. No human creature enters into existence already fully defined and perfect: we must learn who and what we are, both as children and as adults. We learn to accept the gift of ourselves, above all by taking on the task of forming our identity, which is implied in this gift, and rediscovering it at every new stage of life. 113\. The process of developing one’s identity takes place at different levels, both natural and cultural, so that the more complex a society is in terms of classes, professions, common interests or religions, the more complex it will be to form an identity from the overlapping of different sources of identity. Throughout history, human beings have developed and enhanced their identities by establishing new relationships, especially through marriage (cf. *Gen* 2:24), forming new families, migrating from their homeland to other places, learning new languages and modes of expression, or adopting new customs and ways of life. Our nature, precisely because it is human, enables us to realise a great variety of ways of thinking, feeling, living and identifying ourselves. But this also implies the possibility of making mistakes, so that our ability to give ourselves an identity or to re-imagine our identity is not infallible; on the contrary, it remains exposed to the danger of confusion in identifying our own reality. 114\. The various factors that make up identity must be considered in their unity. The search for identity is always accompanied by the need for unity, completeness and synthesis that harmonises the various elements, avoiding dispersal and fragmentation. In this sense, the search for one’s identity takes place in the ‘heart’, that is, in the centre of the person that knows how to unite the pieces. The word ‘heart’ cannot be explained exhaustively by biology, psychology, anthropology or other sciences. It is one of those original words that indicate the reality that belongs to the whole human being, as a corporeal and spiritual person. As it leads us to the intimate centre of our person, the heart allows us to recognise ourselves in our entirety and not just in some isolated aspect. Therefore, it is also capable of unifying and harmonising our personal history, which may seem fragmented into a thousand pieces, but where everything can have meaning. In the heart we find the right relationship with the world, and that is why it is said that when we grasp reality with our heart, we can know it better and more fully. Finally, the heart makes it possible to build authentic bonds, because a relationship that is not lived with the heart is incapable of overcoming the fragmentation of individualism. If relationships do not involve the heart, we arrive at a ‘loss of desire’, because the other disappears from the horizon and we close ourselves off in our own ego with its needs, without the capacity for healthy relationships. As a result, we also become incapable of welcoming God.\[121\] 115\. For us Christians, among the many elements that constitute human identity, one stands out as a true formal principle, capable of ordering the other aspects. It is the gift of being not only creatures or servants of God, but of being called to be sons and daughters of the Father, to the praise of his glory and for the benefit of the whole of creation (cf. *Rom* 8:20-23). This is attested to by the Spirit of God who cries out in us, ‘Abba/Father’ (cf. *Gal* 4:6; *Rom* 8:15) and conforms us to Christ, so that we are made participants in his divine identity as Son of the Father (cf. *2 Pet* 1:4).\[122\] Filial identity is the ultimate and radical determination of our identity, and those who are marked in their hearts by the Holy Spirit find in this identity as sons and daughters the point of reference for every other aspect of their identity.\[123\] This identity, entrusted to our freedom, appears as an all-encompassing reality that enters into the depths of the heart, so that the person reaches a definitive awareness of his or her own uniqueness in distinction from everyone else. It is also an integrative act, capable of harmonising the different dimensions in the gift of self. The response to the divine call appears unique, irreplaceable, personal and therefore new each time.\[124\] Let us consider some constitutive dimensions of identity in this light. **2\. The gift of life and communion in the face of** ***transhumanism*** **and** ***posthumanism*** 116\. The complexity of the processes involved in forming one’s identity makes possible the misunderstandings in which the dreams and illusions of *transhumanism* and *posthumanism* proliferate. In fact, the path towards each person’s identity is not achieved in the manner of a guaranteed mechanism or as a natural evolution. People discover that they are called to answer for themselves and their actions, in which they express who they are and who they want to be. They realise themselves in a unique and irreducible history, which cannot be dissolved into an anonymous mass that lacks originality. The search for and formation of one’s identity always brings something new, both in relation to natural conditions and to the culture in which one lives. Such identity cannot be played out in an arbitrary, absolute affirmation of oneself, without a heritage to appropriate or natural conditions to interpret; but neither can it be reduced to correspondence to the expectations of others, to cultural forms and pre-established social roles. It is not a question of wearing a ready-made uniform, but of sewing a tailor-made suit that expresses one’s originality and the unique name that God knows and has entrusted to us, because each of us is an original and unrepeatable being, called to make a unique contribution.\[125\] 2.1. *Shaping one’s identity starting from the body given* 117\. At the beginning stands the relationship with one’s own body: we must recognise that ‘the human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God.” \[...\] It is in the body that each person recognizes himself or herself as generated by others.’\[126\] We understand the urgency of the warning to respect the order of elementary human experience: ‘We are called to safeguard our humanity, and this means first of all accepting and respecting it as it was created.’\[127\] This is a truly ‘ecological’ choice: ‘Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology.’\[128\] In particular, one of the greatest challenges facing culture today, at the level of personal identity, is the acceptance of one’s own body as sexed, seen as a gift and not as a prison that prevents us from truly being ourselves, or as biological material to be modified.\[129\] 118\. In this context, theological reflection on disability can also take on significant value in defending the infinite dignity of every person by embracing this particular state. The voice of people with disabilities is a radical challenge to the ‘culture of waste’ that resonates in certain *transhumanist* or *posthumanist* arguments. We are on very delicate ground, yet significant for the question of biological-natural identity, which deserves much more in-depth consideration. In general, it is necessary to recall the decisive significance of dependence and vulnerability as integral elements of every human experience.\[130\] While congenital disabilities are not as such willed by God directly, disability should be explored – with all its specific particularities – as a manifestation of those dimensions of finitude and contingency that should be seen and experienced not merely as something negative in regard to the formation of identity. In fact, the condition of disability keeps personal identity firmly anchored to given bodily-spiritual reality, to the point of appearing as an inescapable element of the identity of the disabled person. In the context of the whole person and his or her history, disability can also be an opportunity for good, wisdom and beauty. We are far from *transhumanism’s and* *posthumanism’s dreams* of escaping from the natural basis of existence, and especially from the limitations of one’s own body, in order to achieve one’s identity. 2.2. *Being a gift to others* 119\. The identity that is affirmed in the gift of self is at the centre of those interpersonal relationships in which the person is realised: ‘As a spiritual being, the human creature is defined through interpersonal relations. The more authentically he or she lives these relations, the more his or her own personal identity matures. It is not by isolation that human beings establish their worth, but by placing themselves in relation with others and with God.’\[131\] These relationships become significant for identity if they are not lived in a selfish and closed manner, since human beings come to themselves through others and in relation to others. 120\. The mystery of the human person includes his or her call to social communion. *Gaudium et spes* reiterated that human beings, which are ‘the only creatures on earth which God willed for themselves (*Deus propter seipsam voluerit*), cannot fully find themselves except through a sincere gift of themselves (*nisi per sincerum sui ipsius donum*)’.\[132\] The papal magisterium insists on the importance of persons realising themselves in a dynamism of transcendence, a sort of ‘ecstasy’ in the gift of self: human beings cannot ‘fully know themselves apart from an encounter with other persons \[...\] No one can experience the true beauty of life without relating to others, without having real faces to love.’\[133\] No person can achieve fulfilment in isolation, but only in love realised in openness, in the capacity to welcome others and establish solid bonds.\[134\] 121\. Authentic identity requires a real experience of otherness. Following this direction, it is necessary to build solid bonds through social dialogue, understood as the ability to listen to the other as other, that is, for the reasons that make them irreducible and different: ‘All this calls for the ability to recognize other people’s right to be themselves and to be different. This recognition, as it becomes a culture, makes possible the creation of a social covenant. Without it, subtle ways can be found to make others insignificant, irrelevant, of no value to society.’\[135\] It is in the context of this dialogue that an identity is achieved which is not exclusive, but consistent and capable of recognising and proposing the elementary human experience to all. 2.3. *The transcendence of God’s gift that opens us to an infinite horizon* 122\. Religion, understood as a relationship with the sacred and, above all, with the Mystery of God, recalls the transcendence of the gift of life, keeping open, above all, the horizon of the mystery of origin and end, and allowing us to overcome the temptation to plan human life according to our own measure and criteria: ‘ *God is* *the guarantor of the true development of human beings*, inasmuch as, having created them in his image, he also establishes the transcendent dignity of men and women and feeds their innate yearning to “be more”. The human being is not a lost atom in a random universe, but is rather God’s creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved.’\[136\] *Only He can decide who is born and who dies*. This view of our origin opens up an infinite horizon on the destiny of the person, created in the image and likeness of God, destined to share in His own fullness of life. A transcendent vision of the person and his or her destiny is necessary to sustain, with the right motivations, the full value of every human life in its overall dynamism.\[137\] 123\. Faith in Jesus Christ offers a perspective that broadens our view of the contingent facts of history, with the concrete question about the origin of everything and the ultimate end: ‘Precisely because God gives a resounding “yes” to human beings, they cannot fail to open themselves to the divine vocation to pursue their own development. The truth of development consists in its completeness: if it does not involve the whole human being and every human being, it is not true development.’\[138\] Faced with this powerful ‘Yes’ from the Creator Lord, who could arrogate to themselves the right to say ‘no’ to a human life and stop this personal story that has begun? 124\. We find a paradigmatic correspondence between God’s ‘Yes’ and the cooperation of the human creature in the Annunciation to Mary (cf. *Lk* 1:26-38). The Gospel narrative reveals a personal and intimate relationship in which God and Mary (representing all creatures) are free interlocutors. In her response to God, Mary shows herself to be a ‘theologal person’ in an original dialogue with God. She responds to God’s word addressed to her with a likewise total and unreserved ‘Yes’ in which she dispossesses herself for God, and thus realises the true possession of herself.\[139\] Thus, Mary exemplifies openness to the transcendent fulfilment offered by God in Jesus Christ, to which the dignity of the person is itself inclined.\[140\] This destiny is not a gift extrinsic to human experience. On the contrary, it corresponds in an excessive way to the dynamism inscribed in the development of the human being and the cosmos and thus perfects the very natural reality in which we live.\[141\] **3\. The unique position of human beings in the cosmos** 125\. The personal identity of the human being also implies a unique position in the cosmos, in relation to all other creatures: ‘Now human beings are not wrong when they regard themselves as superior to bodily concerns, and as more than a speck of nature or a nameless constituent of the human city. For by their interior qualities they outstrip the whole sum of mere things. They plunge into the depths of reality whenever they enter into his own hearts; God, who probes the heart, awaits them there.’\[142\] Moreover, recent attempts to downplay human nature, with materialistic or biologically inspired reductions, are still paradoxically human behaviour: even when dreaming of transcending their human nature, or lowering themselves to the merely animal level, the person inevitably acts as a human being. The human person, as a spiritual being called to a direct and immediate relationship with God, can never legitimately be reduced to the category of an object, nor can he or she reduce others to objects of possession.\[143\] It is essential, on the journey towards one’s own identity, that each person recognise this unique position in the cosmos and in the human family. 126\. This does not imply that other living beings should be considered mere objects of domination or exploitation, which would lead to a logic with serious consequences for society: reinforcing the idolatry of the strongest and producing inequalities, injustices and violence for humanity and the planet as a whole.\[144\] According to Sacred Scripture, other creatures deserve a positive view, worthy of care and respect, especially animals as living and sentient beings. Human beings, although at the centre of creation, cannot understand themselves unless they discover themselves situated in the context of other creatures and united with them.\[145\] However, we must avoid the excesses of certain advanced societies, especially in the West, which tend to consider some animals, especially domestic animals, almost as persons.\[146\] We must avoid the reciprocal temptations of humanising animals and reducing the human to the animal. 127\. From a theological perspective, the doctrine of creation as the action of a personal and transcendent God and the understanding of human beings as in the image of God teach us that the existing universe is ‘the setting for a *radically personal* drama’ in which the Creator acts. We are therefore invited to recognise ‘the sacred character of visible creation’,\[147\] where human beings assume the role of responsible stewards of the physical universe. They are part of created reality and have the capacity to give new form to the natural order, becoming agents in the evolution of the universe itself, but always in accordance with its own laws.\[148\] They must give an account of this stewardship of the world, received as a gift, to the One who entrusted it to them. --- ![[maps/bibliography#^biblio-itc-qvh]]