The dignity of the human being

The dignity of the human being is rooted in his creation. In the book of Genesis we read: “Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image after our likeness…. God created mankind in his Image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Gen. 1:26a-27)

The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new Creation in Christ.

The Church, interpreting the symbolism of Biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original state of holiness and justice. This grace of original holiness was to share in Divine life.

By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The inner harmony between the first couple and creation, comprises the state called “original Justice.”

The mastery over the world that God offered man from the beginning was realised above all within man himself: mastery of self. The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthily goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason. The sign of man’s familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden. There he lives to till it and keep it. Work is not yet a burden but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible Creation. This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God’s plan, will be lost by the sin of our first parents. (CCC 374-379)
In the sacred books the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them. And such is the force and power of the Word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigor, and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life. The primary witness of Scripture, therefore, is that God has acted in the life of man, so that the Bible is not so much a code of laws or a book of questions and answers as it is "a history of what God has done in the lives of men, for humanity as a whole, in order to fulfill in them the design of grace. One does not go to the Bible to get ideas about God and to talk about God (although it does reveal God to us as he is in himself, e.g., Ex. 3:14.), but to understand what God is to us and to respond to his presence. "Man wants to experience God's presence somehow, through signs that manifest it unambiguously; and he wants to live in communion with God on a quasi-experiential level." The Fathers of Vatican II expressed the same sentiments: It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will (cf. Eph. 1:9). His will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature (cf. Eph. 2:18; 2 Pet. 1:4). By this revelation, then, the invisible God (cf. Col. 1:15; I Tim. 1:17), from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends (cf. Ex. 33:11; Jn. 15:14-15), and moves among them (cf. Bar. 3:38), in order to invite and receive them into his own company. Since God makes himself known to us by what he does for us, by the extent to which he intervenes in our human history, we must always speak of the mysteries of God, says Congar, "in such a way as to unite a profound perception of what they are in themselves with a vital expression of what they are for us."
The new relationship which results from God's personal intervention in human history causes something unique among the various religions of humanity; it is a relationship in which God approaches man, and man, by a free act of faith, offers himself to whatever God wants to effect in and through him. As Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it: The question of the relationship between God and man is settled in the Bible from God's point of view God chooses, promises, demands, rejects and fulfills. Man must no longer listen to his nostalgia for the divine in himself but in God's word. Action is led beyond all purely human self-realization and becomes obedience to God and law, and this obedience contains a very concrete will of God which demands fulfillment in fellowship, among people, in the world. Lastly, resignation, guided by God's word, becomes a faith ready to accept all and patience ready to endure all, even the dark suffering.
The Bible, therefore, is the word of God that reveals to man his high destiny and also answers man's innate desire to rise from a fallen condition and to experience the divine. It is the rule and standard of all authentic supernatural life and it demands everything; it will not be reduced to our measure because its aim is to fashion us in the image of God. It cannot be replaced by any ersatz spirituality or religious experience which some may seek in spiritism, drugs, group therapy, psychedelic experience or Pentecostalism. Even the charisms enumerated by St. Paul (cf Rom.12:6-8; 1 Cor. I2:8-10) are reducible to the original apostolic mission as stated in the New Testament. Everything must be understood and evaluated in the light of Scripture, and the closer any spirituality is to the Bible, the more authentic it is. This does not mean that the application of biblical teaching to the spiritual life does not admit of any variety whatever, but it does mean that Sacred Scripture ever remains the unifying factor and the ultimate standard. It transcends all diversity. Our task, then, is to determine the basic principles of the Christian life as revealed in the Bible; that is to say, the truths that are valid for every Christian of every age and state of life.
THE OLD TESTAMENT:- Genesis records that the first step in man's relation with God was his creation in the image of God and his situation in a state of innocence which was later lost because of man's sin. What the sin was remains a mystery; we do not know whether it was a particular action or simply the end-product of an accumulation of evil. We do know that man became acutely aware of sin and therefore found access to the one, true God much more difficult. "For man, God is both present and absent, both near and far away. He is present and near as the Creator, since man is dependent on God for his very existence. He is absent and far away insofar as man looks for him from within the framework of his own sinful condition." Eventually, however, and almost unexpectedly, God intervened once more in human history to resume his dialogue with man. Congar says in this regard: The living God of rich biblical monotheism is posited as being the source and measure of all goodness, of all truth, of all authentic existence. The God of biblical monotheism is something other and more than the great clock-maker or great architect of the theists who posit him only as the Creator of the world; after this initial act the world and man have no longer any rapport with anything but themselves and their own nature. The living God is affirmed by the Bible as sovereign source and measure, to which man and all things must unceasingly be referred and must conform so that one does not just exist but exists truly, realizing the meaning, the fullness of one's existence. God's initiative, however, demands a response from Israel, both by obedience to the law given on Sinai and by religious worship. I shall settle my sanctuary among them forever. I shall -make my home above them; I will be their God, they shall be my people" (Ez. 37:26-27). But God also demands repentance and conversion, not only collectively but individually, and Ezekiel insists that this requires the proper interior dispositions: "House of Israel, in future I mean to judge each of you by what he does -- it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks. Repent, renounce all your sins, avoid all occasions of sin. Shake off all the sins you have committed against me, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit" (Ez. 18:31; cf. also 11:19; 36:26). The emphasis here is clearly on the necessity for each person to make a commitment and assume personal responsibility. Toward the end of the exile (between 548 and 538 BC), the people finally responded to the prophets by confessing their infidelity and acknowledging the one true God. Remember these things, Jacob, and that you are my servant, Israel. I have formed you, you are my servant; Israel, I will not forget you. I have dispelled your faults like a cloud, your sins like a mist. Come back to me, for I have redeemed you (Is. 44:21-22). Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you (Is. 49:15). Your redeemer will be the Holy One of Israel; he is called the God of the whole earth. Yes, like a forsaken wife, distressed in spirit, Yahweh calls you back. Does a man cast off the wife of his youth? says your God. I did forsake you for a brief moment, but with great love will I take you back. In excess of anger, for a moment I hid my face from you. But with everlasting love I have taken pity on you, says Yahweh, your redeemer. (Is. 54:4-8). We have reached a high point in God's revelation of himself, no longer simply as God of power and majesty, as Yahweh Sabbath, the God of armies, but as Father of love and mercy. The marriage symbol used by the prophet, portraying God as a husband, is an echo of the stirring passages of the Book of Hosea, who perhaps lived to see the fall of Samaria in 721 B C. The same wedding imagery is found in Jeremiah (2-3), Ezekiel (16) and the Song of Songs.
The message that comes to us from this rapid survey of the patriarchs and the prophets is that God loves us and asks our response to his love through faith and obedience.
The promises and the entire movement of the Old Testament are orientated to the perfect communication of God to man; the newness of the eternal covenant consists precisely in the Word made flesh, through whom the kingdom of God will be definitively established. Christ, says Congar, is "the last revelation .... When God became man, something that was already true in the previous stages of salvation history reached its highest degree: man resembles God and, therefore, in a totally transcendent way, God resembles man.(18) We know this thanks to the “YES” of the Virgin Mary, Jesus became man, our brother, Saviour, Mediator.
May Mary our Mother be always with us to help us to say “YES” to the voice of God and be collaborators of His redemption. Amen
Sr.Lettemehret Tesfai
Daughters of St.Anne