What is to be a person?
Philosophy coldly defines a person as a "substance of a rational nature." I say, coldly, because the definition is actually very pregnant with implications whose need for us to know and live out has become urgent these days.
The prevailing understanding is quite inadequate and potentially dangerous. Many people understand "person" almost exclusively as an individual, with hardly any reference to his essential dimension of its ability to create relationships to others, especially to God.
Thus, when one uses the word, "personalized,' he usually has in mind his individuality, complete with his distinctive peculiarities, preferences, and uniqueness. There's hardly any reference to the common bond that relates him to others.
A point in the Catechism of the Catholic Church says something relevant. "Being in the image of God, the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone."
The Catechism explains further, shedding light on the difference between a something and a someone. The human person who is a someone and not just a something is "capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead."
A person is an individual who is always in relation with others. He simply cannot be on his own. His life, his growth, and maturity, his capacity to resist temptations and to handle his weaknesses well would depend on his relation with God and with others.
Since we are made in the image and likeness of God, we as persons must somehow reflect also the perpetual relation within the three persons in one God. We are meant to be taken up, with God's grace, in that Trinitarian relation of knowing and loving one another.
That's why Christ told us in no unclear terms that the greatest commandment we ought to follow is to love God with all our might, and the second greatest is to love our neighbor.
We need to train ourselves to be always mindful and thoughtful of the others. In this way, we avoid confining ourselves to our own world which definitely will not be the real world, because it would be a world of pure subjectivism, detached from the objective world outside of ourselves.
We have to be both mindful and thoughtful because this is what is proper to us. If we fail to cultivate these traits, we actually are harming our very own humanity, aborting our road to human maturity, not to mention, the fullness of Christian life.
We need to be mindful because we have to know what's going around us. We should never be aloof and indifferent. We have to be aware not only of things and events that are taking place, whether near or far, but also and most especially of persons, starting with the one right beside us.
And not only should we be mindful. We also need to be thoughtful. We should think ahead of how things are developing and of what we can do to help shape their evolution. Life is always a work in progress, and there are goals, the ultimate and the subordinate, to reach. We should not get stuck with the here and now.
We should learn to read the signs of the times and to prepare ourselves for whatever indications or warnings they are giving us. This way we put ourselves in condition to influence the flow of things, and to somehow already fashion the future. In this way, we extricate ourselves from our own subjective world and get to grapple with the objective reality.
If we can only be true to our status as persons, we can never afford to waste time in some self-indulgent activities. That's simply because there are many and endless things that we need to think about and relate ourselves with. People with varying needs will always be around. Issues, concerns, challenges keep on coming. How to relate them to God will always demand our attention and action.
Every night before going to bed, we need to examine ourselves if indeed this is the principle that we tried to follow during the day. We can always find some room for improvement.
This is actually a big challenge nowadays as we see people, especially the young ones, trapped in their own world of self-absorption. Thanks and no thanks to our new technologies that, if used indiscriminately, can ruin our need to be mindful and thoughtful, undermining our status as persons.
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