> [[itc-qvh-04|← Previous]] | [[quo-vadis-humanitas-toc|TOC]] | [[itc-qvh-06|Next →]] # Chapter IV. Hope as Vocation: The Human Person Open to the Absolute 128\. What the human family needs, and within it every person seeking their true identity, is not an evolutionary leap beyond the present condition, but rather a saving relationship that makes the adventure of realising oneself fully meaningful and beautiful. In this sense, we speak of humanity saved, that is, respected as a gift from God and not replaced. Salvation in Christ involves a ‘full surpassing’ of our humanity only in the sense that it brings about the process of taking up, purifying and recreating the human. It is therefore not primarily a question of accelerating development towards new forms of life, but rather of sustaining the journey of peoples and individuals, offering a purpose and meaning that allows each and every one to fulfil their vocation, shaping the identity of daughters and sons of God in a universal fraternity. The dreams of *transhumanism* and *posthumanism* presume to oversimplify the tensions that run through the human experience. But this project, on closer inspection, proves to be dehumanising. 129\. The adventure of personal and social human identity has an unavoidable ‘dramatic’ character. By this we mean to emphasise the free nature of the process of becoming oneself, through concrete historical circumstances – with all the sufferings, sins and failures it involves – which is never definitively concluded in history until its eschatological fulfilment. This dynamism, positive in itself, is recognised above all in certain ‘tensions’ or ‘polar oppositions’ (following Romano Guardini’s expression) proper to our creaturely condition but which, given original sin, are also experienced in a disordered way and in need of redemption. The Christian proclamation of salvation offers a completely human way, by grace, of living these polarities which is both healing and elevating. It is a matter of living them as a place of encounter with the event of Christ’s death and resurrection and thus verifying the anthropological credibility of the Christian proclamation of the new creature. **1\. The ‘polar tensions’ of our creaturely condition** 130\. The human condition appears to be marked by irreducible tensions or polarities, the meaning of which each person and the whole of humanity is called to discover, in order to bring them together in a harmony that allows life to grow in all its potentialities.\[149\] These ‘polar tensions’ are constitutive of common human experience, and in them the person discovers his or her being as a mystery open to the Mystery of God. If we want to understand the resources and difficulties of the journey to becoming ourselves, we need to become aware of these characteristic polarities of the human condition. 131\. Polar opposites give form to concrete life in every human being and in the community. Human life itself is structured in an ‘oppositional’ form.\[150\] These tensions run through all levels of reality and take on different expressions in the search for unity in concrete living. In polarity, opposition is referred to a higher plane which maintains the tension. Limits are integrated, not denied. Oppositions help us to understand that it is only in the concrete that complete reality is realised, which brings about a synthesis in growth, uniting opposing determinations and realising harmony between them. 132\. Such polarities should not be interpreted in a dualistic logic, but as a ‘unity of the two’, nor can they be oversimplified by reducing one term in a monistic logic of identity or in a dualistic logic of the dialectic of opposites. Polarities therefore transcend dualisms and monisms, which claim to capture the mystery of the human being, and show the right and indispensable value of difference. The opposite poles are not cancelled out; one pole does not destroy the other. Neither contradiction nor absolute identity dominates. To live them well, another logic is needed, one that allows us to grasp the inner rhythm of reality in a form that is more consistent with the data and more harmonious. We are ultimately referred to the very rhythm of Trinitarian life, which is reflected in creation, by virtue of which the relationship between two does not close in on itself, nor does it reabsorb otherness into the one, but opens up to completion in the third, always excessive and inexhaustible. 133\. Through polar oppositions, the original gift that precedes and gives foundation remains intact. They must therefore be understood in the light of the character of promise that springs from the gift itself. Rather than as mere ‘facts’, polarities should be interpreted as ‘gifts’. It is precisely in Christ that the complete taking up of polarities into a unity that maintains differences and harmonises them in a higher synthesis comes about. This capacity for unifying integration, which respects reality in its concreteness and therefore in its polar opposites, is characteristic of the ‘ *et/et* ’ way of thinking typical of the Catholic *forma mentis*. And this is what happens in the Church: in her, human beings acquire by grace a sense of total reality, since in her the horizon of experience of the person and his or her mystery is broadened. Let us then briefly examine these creaturely polarities in an order that goes from the most immediate human experience to the deepest root, specifying that there is a ‘circular progression’ among them rather than a simple succession.\[151\] 134\. a) With regard to the tension between *the material and the spiritual*, it should be remembered that human beings, created in the image of God, are physical beings who share the world with other living beings. This implies, first of all, that corporeality is essential to the identity of the person, but it also means that the material world creates the conditions for human beings to engage with one another and so integrates interpersonal relationships: in the family, in peoples and in humanity. Biblical anthropology excludes mind-body dualism, avoiding both spiritualistic and materialistic reductions of the human being: the person is a ‘unity of body and soul’.\[152\] This unity, which does not remove polarity but unifies it at a higher level, can be grasped in the symbol of the ‘heart’, as already indicated: ‘This profound core, present in every man and woman, is not that of the soul, but of the entire person in his or her unique psychosomatic identity. Everything finds its unity in the heart, which can be the dwelling-place of love in all its spiritual, psychic and even physical dimensions.’\[153\] 135\. Regarding the relationship between the spiritual nature of human beings and evolving matter, it is important to emphasise that human beings cannot be explained solely as the result of the evolution of matter: ‘Each of us has a personal identity capable of entering into dialogue with others and with God himself. \[...\] The qualitative novelty implied by the emergence of a personal being within the material universe presupposes a direct action of God, a unique call to life and to the relationship of a You to another you.’\[154\] We therefore reiterate that human beings ‘must not be subordinated as a mere means or instrument to either the species or society.’\[155\] As created in the image of God, human beings are capable of weaving relationships of communion with the Triune God and with other human persons, but they are also capable of exercising a service to the created universe with their work.\[156\] 136\. b) Let us now consider the tension between *male and female*. The most beautiful fruit of *sexual difference* is the recognition of the other and the mirroring in reciprocity that springs from the encounter between *man and woman* in Adam and Eve, with the wonder that accompanies it: ‘When finally God presents the woman, the man exultantly recognizes that this creature, and this creature alone, is a part of him: “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (*Gen* 2:23). Finally, there is a reflection, a reciprocity. \[...\] This was how the man was, he lacked something to reach his fullness; reciprocity was lacking.’\[157\] In seeking to shape their own identities, each is in some way referred to the other and vice versa: ‘The difference between man and woman is not meant to stand in opposition, or to subordinate, but is for the sake of communion and generation \[…\]. In order to know themselves well and develop harmoniously, human beings needs the reciprocity of man and woman.’\[158\] The identity of man and woman is not a contingent variable that can be shaped independently or even in contrast to its original and permanent meaning; it is not a property to be managed according to subjective perception, but a gift to be received as a blessing from God who is love (cf. *1 Jn* 4:8) in a dynamic that does not close in on itself, but opens up to a dimension of the ‘unity of the two’ (according to the teaching of John Paul II).\[159\] This is the challenge of being ‘generative’, that is, capable of giving oneself to another, which opens up to a third and thus to new life. The current tendency to deny or ignore this natural difference, received as a gift, and to replace it with any possibility that the human mind can imagine, becomes a dangerous way of erasing real bodily identity and closing oneself off in an endogamous self-contemplation. 137\. c) Furthermore, the tension between *the individual and the community* should not be forgotten. Every human being created in the image of God is a person, capable of knowledge and love, who expresses himself or herself both as *an individual and as a member of the community*. Human beings are relational and social, included in the human family. Human beings are therefore called to realise their social dimension within family, religious, civil, professional and other groups, which together form the society to which each belongs.\[160\] The fundamentally social character of human existence must be balanced with recognition of the inalienable value of the person, with his or her individuality and originality, as well as the importance of individual rights and cultural diversity. 138\. d) Finally, we must remember the tension between *the finite and the infinite*. People feel called to affirm their identity in a tensity towards a fullness (*the infinite*) that is called into question by contingency and limitation (*the finite*). No person can live without some openness to the totality of reality and its meaning, even if it is in the form of rejection.\[161\] By virtue of their spiritual (incarnate) nature, every person is *capax omnia*, open in some way to being present to all things, and also *capax Dei*. This reference should not be thought of as an infinite goal to be achieved starting from individual experiences of finite and limited reality or from the accumulation of different experiences. Rather, the wisdom of Israel teaches us that openness to totality is the necessary dramatic horizon from which the finite can be grasped as such (cf. *Qo* 3:9-11; *Sir* 43:26-28). Therefore, in their historical journey of searching for and developing their identity, persons are called to insert the meaning of the fragment into the whole and to grasp the unity of meaning in its various articulations. Reality is not grasped separately as either finite or infinite, but as a unity of identity-difference of finite-infinite. This is the tension reflected in St Augustine’s famous exclamation: ‘You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you’,\[162\] which will be taken up again in medieval culture, achieving a marvellous literary synthesis between the Augustinian *cor inquietum* and the restless adventure of Ulysses in the *Divine Comedy*. On this need for totality in knowing and living, Dante’s Ulysses indeed urges his companions: ‘Consider your seed, / You were not made to live like brutes, / But to follow virtue and knowledge.’\[163\] **2\. The human experience in the drama of sin and grace** 139\. We now turn to a point of view that is specifically Christian and theological. The ‘polar tensions’ are a spur to the dynamic development of the human being. Human freedom, however, always situated in a history made up of encounters and clashes with other freedoms, is marked by original sin, which finds confirmation in personal sins, and is therefore experienced as a fallen condition and as wounded freedom, exposing itself to a partial and disordered fulfilment. History attests, nevertheless, to the experience of the possibility of living the human condition ever again redeemed, sustained and elevated by grace.\[164\] From this point of view, the category of ‘the dramatic’ implies both the risk to which freedom is exposed in its path of personal realisation, because it can contradict its original condition in sin, and the dramatic aspect of redemption insofar as it is realised through the encounter between the freedom of the Son of God and the freedom of every person situated in history. 2.1. *The rupture of the relationships constitutive of human identity* 140\. Let us pause for a moment on the text of Genesis, where we find a mythico-symbolic description of a concrete reality that has wounded human existence. At the root of the fallen condition, which leads us to misunderstand the authentic meaning of polarities and to lose sight of the promising character of difference or limitation, there is a rupture in the relationships that constitute authentic identity (cf. *Gen* 3-11): ‘Since, through sin, human beings refuse to submit to God, their inner balance is also broken, and contradictions and conflicts erupt within them. Thus torn apart, human beings almost inevitably produce a tear in the fabric of their relationships with other human beings and with the created world.’\[165\] This is a rejection of God’s gift and therefore of relationship with the Creator: ‘This is the first and fundamental “relationship”, which gives value both to the fact that human beings are made of “dust” and to their being alive through the divine “breath”.’\[166\] In the transition from gift to command, which identifies and proposes a task, suspicion creeps in (cf. *Gen* 3), communicated by the serpent, and this changes the view of God and reality and leads to transgression, compromising the relationship with the Creator.\[167\] 141\. The first consequence of this rupture is disorder within the human being between the material/corporeal and spiritual dimensions.\[168\] This disorder implies a loss of harmony between the two dimensions and requires a special vigilance in order to recognise the spiritual and immortal soul within oneself and not allow oneself to be deceived by ‘a fantasy born only of physical or social influences’, but rather lay hold ‘of the proper truth of the matter.’\[169\] Disorder in our relationship with matter also affects our corporeality, the place where we experience our limitations and fragility, as can be seen in ‘nakedness’ when it loses its original innocence and integrity and so becomes hostage to the other. More broadly, it is precisely the loss of the symbolic value of all things, reduced to material to be arbitrarily manipulated for profit alone, rather than seeing them as signs of a greater mystery, that is at the root of the current ecological crisis.\[170\] 142\. As a result of this, interpersonal relationships are also compromised. First of all the relationship between man and woman, then the relationship between siblings, and finally the relationships between peoples. We are witnessing an expansion of human conflict: ‘The rupture with Yahweh simultaneously breaks the bond of friendship that had united the human family. Thus the subsequent pages of Genesis show us the man and the woman as it were pointing an accusing finger at each other. Later we have the brother hating his brother and finally taking his life. \[...\] The result of sin is the shattering of the human family, already begun with the first sin and now reaching its most extreme form on the social level.’\[171\] Universal fraternity, inscribed in our common origin, is not adequately recognised; indeed, it is constantly offended by the manifestation of so many social particularities and differences, which provide a pretext for the arrogance that dwells in the human heart and is consolidated in the affirmation of one’s own identity in polemical opposition to others. History, since its beginnings, has therefore been marked by rivalry and war, and peoples have had to rise from the rubble each time, attempting to heal the fractures and redraw the outlines of peace and solidarity.\[172\] 2.2. *Salvation through the humanity of Christ* 143\. God’s free initiative, which comes to the aid of every person and every people on the path of forming their identity, finds its gratuitous and concrete form of realisation in the history of salvation. In it, God revealed himself to human beings by identifying himself in his relationship with them. He revealed his identity to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (cf. *Ex* 3 and 6). Jesus fully reveals to us the mystery of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and who gives us the gift of becoming children in the Son, brothers and sisters, able to call God Father and Our Father. In the mysteries of Christ’s life, the filial resolve of Jesus’ freedom is manifested according to the measure of a relationship of reciprocity with the Father, which He lives in the Spirit. In the light of Jesus’ prayer to the Father (cf. *Mt* 11:27), we come to know the elements that are fundamental to a complete understanding of our relationship with God. First comes the initiative of God, known and recognised as the Father who gives everything of himself to the Son. Secondly, Jesus teaches that only the Son knows the Father (cf. *Jn* 10:15): only He who recognises himself as the Son knows and recognises the Father as Father. The third element is the dynamic reciprocity between Father and Son, where the asymmetry of origin (only the Father is the beginning without beginning) is given in the symmetry of gratuitousness and totality of mutual gift. This mutual love between Father and Son is disclosed and offered to the disciples in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as Person-Gift. He also makes it possible for the disciples to cry out from their hearts: “Abba Father!” (cf. *Rom* 8:15; *Gal* 4:6).\[173\] The God who reveals himself as Father and Son and Spirit thus reveals himself as ‘our’ Father (cf. *Mt* 6:9-13), Father of all human creatures immersed in time and space. Every human being is called to recognise and welcome the gift of his or her creaturely identity within the wider family of creation.\[174\] But the full revelation of who we are and who we are called to become is given to us by the incarnation of the One who is the Father’s Image, in whose image and likeness we were created and divinised (cf. *Col* 1:15) and who redeemed us from sin.\[175\] 144\. Jesus Christ identifies with every aspect of what it means to be truly human. He does so by becoming part of a specific people, with its own history and traditions, namely, the Jewish people, chosen and called by God to be a blessing for all nations. He does so by receiving his earthly existence from Mary, the wife of Joseph, of the tribe of Judah, and by learning the family trade of carpentry. He receives the fullness of the gift of the Spirit from the moment of his conception, and at his baptism in the Jordan he is sent to fulfil the mission entrusted to him. From the moment of his conception, the Holy Spirit pervades and shapes his humanity in accordance with his filial identity, given him by the Father. In this way, the Son expresses his personal and relational eternal identity, which he receives from the Father, in our true humanity and thus fully reveals human beings to themselves.\[176\] In a concrete story and as a member of the human family he becomes our brother, and so he opens the way for us to receive a new identity as his brothers and sisters and he nourishes this identity within us. 145\. His complete self-giving for us is manifested in his pierced body and in his blood shed on the cross for our salvation, and he becomes even more ‘ours’ in his resurrection for us. Christ, who saves us on the cross, presents himself to us risen, full of life, and from his wounded and transfigured heart there comes to us the gift of the Holy Spirit. This mystery of Easter has opened up for us the real possibility of reaching human fulfilment, which we begin to taste in our daily lives. As Pope Leo XIV says: ‘ *Christ is risen. He is truly risen!* \[...\] We must ask, then, for the grace to see the certainty of Easter in every trial of life.’\[177\] *The mystery of Christ’s Easter reaches our human life in all its dimensions, in all its stages and in all its moments*. We need to be aware that we are in need of salvation: Christ saves us today! 146\. The encounter with the humanity of Jesus Christ illumines our humanity and reveals us to ourselves. First of all, it restores our sense of freedom in the face of the Creator's call, precisely as it realises our vocation to participate in the eschatological fullness of His risen life. This realisation of the fullness of the human condition (cf. *Eph* 4:13) and ‘the perfection of humanity in Christ challenge the absolute autonomy that sinners have chosen for themselves. This means that the proclamation of the Gospel cannot be separated from a proclamation of judgment and a call to conversion.’\[178\] Following Christ includes the way of the Cross, a path that does not destroy the person’s being, but eliminates the many forms alienation takes, illumining that critical judgement regarding human behaviour which, according to the measure of Christ, offers a service to human dignity and the common good in society, bringing justice to fulfilment with charity. 147\. The ‘mystery of charity’ of Jesus Christ offers a global vision of reality that is new and, ‘while it subjects the desire of modern humanity to critical examination, it nevertheless affirms its importance, purifies it and surpasses it.’\[179\] This desire, which can also be glimpsed in the dreams expressed by various forms of *transhumanism* and *posthumanism*, is illumined in the light of its fulfilment in Christ: ‘What all human beings seek, desire and hope for, at least implicitly, is transcendent, infinite to the point that it can only be found in God. Humanity’s true humanisation reaches its pinnacle in its gratuitous divinisation, that is, in friendship and communion with God. \[…\] The grace of Jesus Christ abundantly fulfils the deepest desires of human beings, even those that exceed the limits of human strength.’\[180\] The fulfilment of human beings in God neither absorbs nor diminishes the human, just as it does not impoverish the divine that is communicated. It is, in fact, an encounter of freedom, where God divinises at the same time that the human being is humanised. **3\. The new humanity in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God** 148\. ‘The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of the human being take on light.’\[181\] In the event of Jesus Christ, the Father’s ‘pre-established plan’ for creatures, and in particular for human beings, was revealed (cf. *Acts* 2:22-23; *Eph* 1:1-14).\[182\] Christian anthropology is fully illumined when we recognise that we have been willed and created by the Father to become ‘sons and daughters in the Son’ and to participate, through the gift of the Spirit, in the communion of intra-divine love.\[183\] What we as Christians call ‘grace’ is first and foremost God himself who gives himself to us in Christ as a love that elevates us, purifies us, transforms us and brings our life to its fullness. Grace is first and foremost He himself who saves us on the cross; it is He himself who is the living One who gives us the Holy Spirit and consequently brings about a new dynamism of salvation, of renewal in our very being and in our lives. 149\. The realisation of this divine plan, revealed in the Covenant, began with creation, and its fulfilment is precisely the Christological event that will reach its climax when everything is recapitulated in the Father and God will be all in all (cf. *1 Cor* 15:20-28).\[184\] Christ is the second Adam, in whose image the first was formed (cf. *Rom* 5:14). Christian anthropology, therefore, as proposed by *Gaudium et spes*, perceives the completed perfection of humanity in the light of the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, not only because He is its unsurpassable pattern, but because it is by way of the conformation of the personal history of each human being to His unique history, through the gift of the Spirit, that we become sons and daughters of the Father, and fulfil our human vocation: ‘By His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every human being.’\[185\] 150\. Through the mysteries of Jesus’ life, there comes about the consummation and transfiguration of the world and of history. We do not go beyond Jesus Christ, but we seek to come to him by entering ever more deeply into his Paschal mystery. In Christ, believers are ‘transformed into his likeness, from glory to glory, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit’ (*2 Cor* 3:18). Christ has, in fact, brought all newness in bringing us himself, and the Holy Spirit introduces us into this newness of Christ.\[186\] There can be no ‘trans’ or ‘post’ that the newness of Christ has not already integrated by way of anticipation. Christ is the final word of God in all his unsurpassable newness. 151\. The life of the believer, which is expressed as a response to a call (cf. Jn 15:16), is not realised in a single moment in time, but is prolonged in the incorporation of the Christian into Christ, in the Holy Spirit, so that everything may be offered to the Father. Christian life as a vocation translates into the involvement of personal existence in the existence of Christ ‘until Christ be formed in you’ (*Gal* 4:19). This is the ultimate principle of human unification. It is a progressive assimilation to Christ, until we have his sentiments (cf. *Phil* 2:5), his thoughts (cf. *1 Cor* 2:16). By becoming like the Son, through the gift of his Spirit, vocational existence translates above all into a love that does not spare itself but offers everything to the Father in filial obedience (cf. *Jn* 10:17-18; *Heb* 10:8-10) for the salvation and happiness of our brothers and sisters. 152\. The totality of existence always remains a mystery, but it is no longer an alien enigma. Rather, it becomes a space in which we begin to understand and experience something of the Mystery of God’s love, inasmuch as we adhere freely to it (cf. *1 Jn* 2:3-6). Within this existence ‘in Christ’, anthropological polarities find their gratuitous fulfilment in concrete terms. The tension *finite/infinite* is resolved in the recognition that we are loved in our limited existence, but at the same time oriented, in hope, towards a fullness that we cannot even imagine. 153\. The *material/spiritual* tension (body/soul) finds its full meaning in the resurrection from the dead. On account of this, human beings are saved completely, inasmuch as the resurrected body becomes, in a certain sense, the transparent visible sign of the whole human being, the dimension that reveals the human being’s spiritual nature, which remains the unifying summit of the self and attests to the difference between the human being and other animals. 154\. The tension *man/woman* finds its proper perspective in the Christian proclamation about man and woman as persons created in the image of a personal God with the calling to the ‘unity of the two’ (cf. *Gen* 1:27) with an identical dignity. Thus, we can recognise the originality of sexual difference, an expression of the mystery of God, by virtue of the loving unity between the two, its procreative purpose and its openness to interpersonal communion and communion with God.\[187\] This polarity is not abolished in the resurrection of Christ nor in the transfiguration of the human being that follows: ‘It is sown a living body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a living (*psychikôn*) body, there is also a spiritual (*pneumatikôn*) body.’ (*1 Cor* 15:44-45) Scripture teaches that in the resurrection people will be like angels and will neither marry nor be given in marriage (cf. *Mt* 22:30), yet the resurrected body retains the sex of the physical body. Jesus in his resurrected body remains a man, and Mary, the Mother of God, in her body assumed into heaven, remains a woman. What is true of Jesus and Mary is also true of all humanity. 155\. Finally, the tension *individual/community*, which also implies tension between cultures, finds its point of convergence in Eucharistic and ecclesial communion until its fulfilment in the communion of saints. Christian experience is expressed as belonging to the people of God who journey through history towards their destiny. This belonging does not detract from personal identity, but rather makes it possible and promotes it: ‘In this regard, reason finds inspiration and direction in Christian revelation, according to which the human community does not absorb the individual, annihilating his or her autonomy, as happens in the various forms of totalitarianism, but rather values the individual all the more because the relation between individual and community is a relation between one whole and another.’\[188\] This is a form of belonging that is never exclusive or closed in on itself, one that does not establish an ‘us’ against a ‘you’. Instead, it is an inclusive belonging committed to the affirmation of universal fraternity, in harmony with other religious experience.\[189\] If in the created order there remains a certain ongoing tension between the individual person and the demands of social existence, in the life of grace we participate *in via* inthe perfect harmony between the Persons of the Trinity who share the communion of a single divine life.\[190\] 156\. Incorporation into Christ takes place through the concrete flow of life that springs from him, within the sign of the unity of Christians who proclaim the Word of God and celebrate the sacraments. The Church makes the divine gift tangible so that all may effectively experience the proclamation of salvation and participate in new life in Christ.\[191\] The culminating expression in the Church and in the history of the new reality of human life given in Christ is the Eucharist. Through communion with the body and blood of Jesus, which is, for that very reason, communion with God, disciples become the people of God. Such communion cannot be explained in purely sociological terms, because it is born of the Holy Spirit (cf. *2 Cor* 13:13)\[192\] The Eucharistic celebration takes up and regenerates human relationships and opens them to the communion of the Trinity. It should be emphasised that ecclesial communion fulfils, albeit imperfectly, that profound need for the unity of the individual and of humanity, which has driven so many social and revolutionary utopias throughout history without ever being achieved. In fact, in Eucharistic communion, individual and community are not opposed to each other to the detriment of the other, but are drawn to each other in a circularity that finds adequate expression only from within the Trinitarian Mystery. The Eucharist illumines not only social life and history, but also our relationship with creation, according to the Lord’s promise: ‘We are waiting for *new heavens and a new earth*, where righteousness dwells.’ (*2 Pt* 3:13; cf. *Rev* 21:1)\[193\]The rhythm of life in creation, in its various seasons, is taken up by sacramental celebrations, opened up for the communication of God’s grace and inserted into the Paschal mystery of Christ. In particular, the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist takes on a cosmic significance.\[194\] 157\. Forgiveness and mercy also contribute decisively to the bonds of communion that bring about reconciliation, capable of destroying the walls of separation between individuals and between peoples (cf. *Eph* 2:13-14; *Col* 1:20). In the sacrament of reconciliation, God renews our hearts wounded by evil and sin, as well as our fraternal relationships, allowing us to start afresh, not from the experience of evil done or suffered, but from the fullness of God’s love.\[195\] In this way, processes of reconciliation are also fostered at the social level. 158\. The theological reflection we have sought to make regarding human experience and the process of the maturing of one’s identity is based on the sacramental economy of salvation. In order to (re)elaborate and propose a fully human culture, capable of looking to the future and also confronting the challenges and fundamental misunderstandings conveyed here by *transhumanism* and *posthumanism*, theological reflection must be accompanied by the contribution of other sciences and the arts. For this reason, it is appropriate to invite people and institutions involved in the socio-economic, academic, artistic, cultural and political spheres to collaborate in this goal. Starting from exchanges already underway, the aim is to develop new ways of thinking and acting, in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary form. In this way, theological anthropology can be translated into lived and concrete experience, both on a personal and social level, especially in the educational and cultural fields. Today more than ever, in the face of the challenges of a humanity that looks to the future with hope and uncertainty, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialogue and cooperation are needed. Our purpose must be to give expression to the inexhaustible richness of human experience according to the good design of God our Father. --- ![[maps/bibliography#^biblio-itc-qvh]]