Dignity of 

Humanity

Refer to our Sunday Experience pages to find different prayers to pray as a family sometime during the week as well as setting up a prayer space and other activities as a family.

For the Learn do the following:

1. Watch Video at the top of the page. (if you want more resources, or are interested in learning more about the topic click on the Extra tab).
2. Click on the appropriate grade for your child.
3. Read the "relates to..." section at the beginning.  This is helpful to understand what to convey to your child is important about this lesson.  It will        help make the lesson both an intellectual and a lived lesson.
4. Read through and familiarize yourself with the sample script. 
5. Teach your child the lesson, either using your own words or the sample script.
6. Either discuss the questions with your child (best option), or have your child write out answers to the questions.
7. Have your child do the activities and/or do the activities with them.  
8. If working with a parish return the appropriate material in the way they have requested.

All Content for "The Way", Learn, is original content and copyright of the Diocese of Kalamazoo and may not be copied, reproduced, or used without prior written consent of the Diocese of Kalamazoo.   © 2020 Diocese of Kalamazoo

Relates to Jesus: Jesus is the fulfillment of the dignity that we have as humans.  

Relates to my Faith: Our own dignity shows to us the dignity we should have for everyone we meet.

Sample Script:
The book of Genesis, the very first book in the Bible, describes how God created the world and everything in it, including humans (Genesis 1). God created the world out of nothing by the power of His word.  God first created the sun and the moon.  Then He created the earth and separated the land from the sea.  Next He created plants and living creatures to live on the land and in the sea.  At every step He declared that all He had created was good.  

God’s last act of creation was to create human beings, man and woman.  God set man and woman apart from the rest of creation by creating them in His image and likeness.  No other part of creation was given that special honor.   Being made in God’s image and likeness means that we have a body and a soul.  God created us to be in relationship with Him here on this earth and in heaven.

Because we love God, and because we are grateful for the gift of being made in His image and likeness, we should treat every person we meet with honor and respect.  God loves them just as much as He loves us, and He created them with the special dignity He gave to us!  Every person has worth, and every human life is precious because of this, from the baby growing in its’ mother’s womb to someone who has lived a long life.  Treating others with honor and respect means that we don’t act in a way that will hurt them, or make them feel bad.  

When God created man and woman, He showed His love for them by giving them the plants and animals that live on the earth for food and shelter. Think of all the ways the natural world supports us.  The farmers grow crops and raise animals.  We use oil and gas to drive our cars and provide electricity for our homes.  We build buildings and roads.  We play at the beach or in the snow, at the soccer or baseball field.

The natural world provides what we need to live and grow.  When we see something beautiful, like a rainbow, a flower, or the colorful leaves in the fall, the natural world also reminds us God.  The beauty of a flower is a very small reflection of the beauty of God that we will experience in its fullness in heaven. 

How we treat the things of the natural world is a reflection of our love for God and for other people.  If we don’t take care of it, for example, if we throw trash on the ground, we are showing God that we don’t care about the gift he gave us, and we don’t care if we damage that gift so others can’t enjoy it.  Jesus told us that the greatest commandments are to love God with all your mind and heart (with all that we are), and to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12.28-31).  When we don’t take care of the natural world we fail to do all those things.

Questions: 

How did God create the world?
What is special about the way God created human beings?
What does it mean that humans are created in God’s image and likeness?
How are we supposed to treat the other people?
How is taking care of the natural world a way we can show love to God and others? 

Activities:

Discuss how you as a family can show honor to God by how you treat others and treat the natural world.

Create a list of ways you can respect other people and show honor to the fact they were created in God’s image and likeness.

Relates to Jesus:  Jesus is our role model in love and truth who shows us how we can be good stewards of the gifts that God gives us by our attention to others around us.

Relates to my Faith:  The gift of life given to us by God comes freely out of His love and comes with responsibility as well; namely to care for ourselves and others and the worl around us as He would through care and respect.

Sample Script:  The first chapter of Genesis tells us that when God created human beings, he created them in his image and likeness.  No other part of creation was given this special gift, which bestows on every person a unique dignity and honor.  Although the sin of Adam and Eve brought death into the created world, it did not alter the truth that humanity is and always will be born with that gift of the divine image and likeness.  It is part of who we are from the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb until the moment of death.  It is our truest identity.

It is important to remember too that no one can take this gift away from us.  In fact, you can’t choose to remove it from yourself either.  Many things can happen to a person over the course of their lifetime that can injure his/her sense of human dignity.  And some people grow up with no one to teach them about God or the special gift of how they were created.  But no one and no thing can change how God created us.  No one can undo what God has done! 

This also makes it even more important for each of us to act in ways that honor the dignity God has given to us and to all people.  The way we treat people can build up their dignity or help them discover it.  Sometimes we have to stand up for someone else and defend their human dignity.  Our actions should display our love of God and gratitude for his gifts, including the gift of that other person.

At creation God made Adam and Eve stewards of the rest of creation.   A steward is someone who has been given a responsibility to care for and protect a particular thing.  If your family has a pet, your family acts as stewards of that pet’s life and welfare.  When your parents hire a babysitter to watch you when they go out, they are giving that person stewardship over your care.  Being a steward is a huge responsibility!

How should we exercise our responsibility to be stewards of creation?  We need to be careful and thoughtful with how we use and enjoy the resources of the natural world.  We have to remember that the world was created for the good of all people, those living now and those who will live in the future.  We need to be sure that what we have will be there for them too.

How would you feel if you gave your best friend a special gift and he/she didn’t take care of it?  What would that tell you about how he/she values your friendship?  One of the ways we express our love for God is by taking care of creation.  If we are grateful we will show our gratitude in how we act and how we treat the world around us.  We will be very careful so that our use and enjoyment of the natural world doesn’t leave it damaged or diminished for other people.  
Questions:
Why is it true that no one can take your human dignity away from you?
List examples of how you can build up the human dignity of another person.
What does it mean to be a steward?
How does our use and enjoyment of the natural world an expression of our love for God?
How can we care for God’s creation?

Activities:

Talk with your family about ways you can care for God’s creation.

Create an image of yourself, either in drawing or clay or some other way, and think about how God created you in His image.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus shows us the ultimate way of what it means to have human dignity and to share that dignity with others.

Relates to my Faith: We must use our will and intellect to know and love God first in our lives and then show others that same dignity. 

Sample Script:
When God created humans He set them above the rest of creation by creating them in his image and likeness.  God gave the human race the ability to think (intellect), the ability to choose (free will), and an immortal soul.
 
God does not force his will upon us.  Think of Adam and Eve in the garden.  God told them not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but he didn’t set any guards around it or prevent them from approaching it.  Out of love for God they could have chosen to be obedient.  However, they freely chose to believe the lies of Satan and ate the fruit of that tree. 
 
Our intellect gives us the ability to understand the natural world, and to understand God’s law, as given to Moses in the Ten Commandments and fulfilled in the life and teaching of Jesus, who said the greatest commandment was to love God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself.  God offers us his friendship, his grace (his life within us) and teaches us how to be in relationship with him.  But he doesn’t force us to choose to live in that relationship.  We are free to choose other things than God, and we call those choices sin.
 
If we truly honor the dignity with which we were created, we would also honor the dignity of other people.  We would see each other as members of a family, since we all were created with the image of God stamped upon us.  The parable of The Good Samaritan is a good example of that.  When the priest and Levite come upon the man lying beaten in the road, they don’t see him as a brother or even a person.  They see him as a problem, as an obstacle that would prevent them from going about their duties.  The Samaritan, when he encounters the injured man, treats him as a brother, immediately tending to his wounds.  The Samaritan’s actions are an example of understanding the shared bond of dignity that all humans have because of being created in God’s image. 
 
Jesus revealed to us the nature of the one, true God, an eternal union of three persons:  God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit.   There is an intimate and eternal exchange of love between each person of the Trinity.  This love is poured upon us.  God created us in love.  Jesus died for our sins because of his love for the Father and for mankind.  The love of the Father and Son spills upon us in the person of the Holy Spirit, who nurtures the seed of faith in our hearts. 
 
We were created for relationship with God and with each other.  The Trinity enables that relationship.  The Catechism states that “Everyone who glorifies the Father does so through the Son in the Holy Spirit; everyone who follows Christ does so because the Father draws him and the Spirit moves him.” (CCC 259)  The Son reveals the Father to us, and unites our prayer to His during the Mass.  The Holy Spirit is like the spiritual blood that courses through our veins, preparing our hearts, making us holy, helping us to pray, to make good choices and to love God.  
The Trinity shapes our relationships with each other too.  That is why God created the family as the basic building block of society.  The dynamics of family life are an imperfect expression of the love the flows within the Trinity.  The members of your family love you, and you love them in return.  This love builds the shared life of the family.  It also radiates out from the family in how the various members interact with their friends and coworkers. 

Questions:
Intellect and free will are abilities that every human receives as a result of being created in God’s image and likeness.
•           Define intellect. 
•           Define Free will.
What is the bond that unites the members of the Trinity?
Why does the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity provide an example for how we should relate with other people?
God the Holy Spirit helps us to pray, make good choices and love God.  What is something you can ask the Holy Spirit to be better at in your faith?

Activities:
Create a list of ways that you are able to show the dignity God has created in each person by your actions.

Write a prayer thanking God for the love He has for you. 

Relates to Jesus: Jesus is the embodiment of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, He is the greatest sign of the dignity God gives to humanity.

Relates to my Faith: Living out the spiritual and corporal works of mercy allows us to live out the dignity God has given us.

Sample Script:
God created all things out of love.  When he created humans, he gave us both a body and an immortal soul.  The Garden of Eden was a place of perfection, and Adam and Eve walked with God and lived in union with him and with each other.  But Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, and the consequence of their sin was a break in their relationship with God and with each other.  Adam and Eve, and their descendants, would now experience death.  At death, their body and soul would be separated. 
 
God expelled them from the Garden, but also promised to send a remedy, someone who would defeat the power of sin and death.  Jesus, the eternal Son of God and second Person of the Trinity, took on human flesh and offered himself as the perfect sacrifice that would defeat sin and death and restore our relationship with God.  Through Jesus, the gates of heaven were opened.  We live in confident expectation that our body and soul will be reunited, and we will one day live in complete union with God.
 
Although every human being is created in the image and likeness of God, we are not all rubber stamps of each other.  Every person is a unique and unrepeatable expression of God’s image and likeness.  We even learn this through science, which shows that every person’s fingerprints are unique.  In a sense each person is a finger print of God.  Each person is a gift that God places in the world at a specific time and in a specific location.  God created us for relationship with Himself and other people.  We are a human family, formed by our Creator.
 
Because of sin, we don’t get along with each other all the time.  We get angry and impatient, and sometimes our words and actions do not reflect our own human dignity or the human dignity of the person we are interacting with.  The Fifth Commandment states “You Shall not kill.”  It’s easy to think we live out that Commandment perfectly, because we haven’t taken another person’s life physically.  But we can impact the quality of another person’s life physically.  And we can injure them by hurting them emotionally or spiritually.  When we laugh at someone’s mistake, or make fun of them because they aren’t as naturally gifted at sports or at math, we can injure their sense of who they are as a unique image of God.  We injure their self-worth, and their belief in their own gifts and abilities.   God created humans to be in relationship with each other, and maybe someone is feeling isolated or forgotten.  Because God made humans with bodies and souls, we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves and other people, caring for the whole person.  We have a responsibility to see the people we meet as gifts from God and treat them accordingly.
 
Jesus laid out this responsibility when he taught about the final judgment (Matthew 25.31-46).  This passage is sometimes referred to as the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  Jesus praises those who respond to the needs of others (the hungry, thirsty, naked, stranger, ill, in prison) and condemns those who do not.  A key to this passage is that Jesus identifies himself with those in need “Whatever you did for one of these, you did for me” and “Whatever you did not do for one of these, you did not do for me.”   When we encounter someone in need do we see the face of Jesus?  Do we consider their God-given dignity as we respond to them?  Do we see them as gifts from God or as a nuisance or a problem?  Jesus is asking us to open our hearts to receive the gift of His presence in the people we encounter.
 
The Church teaches us how to care for and uphold the human dignity of others in the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy (CCC 2447).  These “works” are actions we can take to support the human dignity of the people in our family, neighborhood, nation and world.  These works are drawn from the example of Jesus.  Most of the corporal (bodily, physical) works are taken from the scripture we just considered, Matthew 25. 31-46.  The spiritual works are also drawn from the actions and teachings of Jesus.  Being made in the image and likeness of God means having both body and soul.  We have to take care of the whole person, not just one aspect of them.  That is true in how we care for ourselves as well as how we care for others.  As baptized members of the Body of Christ we have a responsibility to uphold the human dignity of others.       
*For an explanation of the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy click here.
  
Questions:
How is each person a gift from God?
List the Corporal Works of Mercy and give an example of each one. 
List the Spiritual Works of Mercy and give an example of each one. 
How do the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy uphold the human dignity of the people they are directed toward? 
List some instances from Jesus’ life that are examples of the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.
 
Activities:
Discuss with your family how you can incorporate the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy into your family life
Identify ways in which your parish community engages in the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy
 

Relates to Jesus:  Jesus invites us into relationship with Him so we can have fullness of love, beauty, truth, and goodness in our lives. This relationship places us in the family of God and strengthens us to daily live out the virtues.

Relates to my Faith:   Our faith allows us to interact with one another in the ways that we are supposed to; namely to see in the other person a sister or brother who is dignified by being created in the Divine Image. This recognition should drive us on to engage in the Church's missionary outreach in solidarity.

Sample Script:  When you look in the mirror what do you see?  A person who was created in the image and likeness of God, and redeemed by the death of Jesus, the Son of God and Second Person of the Trinity.   You see the same truth in every person you set eyes on.  Whether a person knows this great truth about themselves or not, we do because God has revealed it to us through His Church.  God draws all of us into one big family, His family. 
 
Being made in God’s image and likeness means that we were given capacities that the rest of creation does not have:  the ability to think and reason (intellect), the ability to make choices and distinguish right from wrong (free will), and an immortal soul.  These qualities enable us to understand the workings of the natural world, to have self-awareness and understanding, to have empathy and give of ourselves in relationship with others.   It also enables us to know and love God, and to live out the covenant Jesus established by his death and resurrection. 
 
Being made in God’s image and likeness gives every human person an inherent dignity.  We were born with this dignity, God placed it deep within us, and no person or thing can take it away.   This shared dignity gives us an instant bond with the rest of humanity.  As Christians, we understand human nature and the gift of dignity.  That knowledge also gives us a responsibility to take care of one another and to uphold human dignity in every setting.  How we interact with our family members, schoolmates, teammates, colleagues at work, and random people we meet in a store or on a sidewalk is to be guided by the duty to recognize and uphold the inherent human dignity of that person.  We are called to do this individually, as a family, as a parish community, and as a society.  The Catechism reminds us:  “Everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as ‘another self,’ above all bearing in mind his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity.’ (CCC 1931).
 
Our society often judges the value of a person by the work they do.  As Christians we are called to witness to the truth that the value and worth of the human person is rooted in who they are as a unique creation of God, formed in His image and likeness.  Human life is sacred, because God’s love envelopes each human being from the moment of conception, throughout the years of life, to death, when the soul returns to God.  That is why the Church speaks out in defense of the dignity of every human life, from the womb to natural death.   A human being is a person, not a thing, and every person’s dignity and basic rights are to be protected.  Not every human being can speak out for his/her own rights, and in that case it is our responsibility to speak out for them. The most fundamental right is the right to life.  God is the author of life, and the life he gives each person is a gift to be cherished, protected and defended from conception to natural death. 
 
Jesus showed a special care and concern for the poor and those who society excluded.  By his words and actions he showed that they had dignity and worth.  He addressed their physical and spiritual needs.  He demonstrated that we are interconnected, and that when an individual suffers it has an effect on the rest of us.  Reflecting on Jesus’ life and teachings, the Church developed the concept of the “Common Good.”  The Common Good can be defined as the total of all the conditions that are necessary for a person or group of people to grow and thrive:  food, clothing, shelter, education, health care and employment.  It is essential that all members of a group or society flourish, and when they don’t it hinders the ability of the rest of the group to flourish. 
 
The Church continues to show special care and concern for those who are most in need, and to work to build up the common good, the common dignity of all people.  As members of the Church, the Body of Christ, we each have a duty to take part in this work.
 
Questions:
What three capacities set humanity apart from the rest of creation?
What do those capacities allow human beings to do?
What is the most fundamental human right?
What is meant by the term “the Common Good”?
Who are those that may not be seen by society as having dignity?
 
Activities:
Identify ways in which your parish community cares for those most in need and works to build up the dignity of all people.

Pray for those whose dignity has been rejected by society: the unborn, the imprisoned, those with any disabilities or any others. 
 

Relates to Jesus:  Jesus met and encountered people right where they were at. His perfect acknowledgement of the other person and listening to their needs serves as our example for how we should be engaging others.

Relates to my Faith:  We are never alone in the Catholic Church. The Holy Spirit is ever prompting and calling our name to remind us of our dignity and worth even when we don't feel very dignified and worthy.

Sample Script:  If I asked you to make a list of your wants and your needs, would the lists be identical?  If you are honest you will admit that they wouldn’t be.  There is a difference between wants and needs. 
 
Every human being is created in God’s image and likeness, instilling deep within each person an inherent dignity.  The Catechism states:  “Respect for the human person entails respect for the rights that flow from his dignity as a creature.” (CCC 1930)   The most basic and fundamental of these rights is to the right to life, and the right to have your life protected from the time you are conceived in your mother’s womb until the time of your natural death.  The protection of life includes the right to food, shelter, clothing, an education, health care and the ability to work and raise a family.  These are the basic needs of every human being.  At first glance we might see these needs as being only physical.  But each of these basic needs affects a person psychologically and spiritually too.  The human person is a union of body and soul, and so we must consider the whole person when addressing human basic human needs.
 
There are many situations where people are denied or deprived of one of these basic human needs. People can be treated unfairly because of their background, level of education or ethnicity.  Perhaps their work site is unsafe, or they are working long hours for little pay.  Maybe they have a mental or physical disability, and are denied the opportunity to develop the gifts that they have fully.  Maybe a natural disaster destroyed their home, and they don’t have any resources to help them get back on their feet.  The list can go on and on.
 
The Catechism reminds us that, “Everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as ‘another self,’ above all bearing in mind his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity.” (CCC 1931). Catholic Social Teaching refers to this as “solidarity.”  Basically, you could say this means adopting an attitude where you look at other people as “us,” not “them.”   In Genesis, after Cain killed Abel he asked God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  Jesus tells us over and over again in Scripture that the answer to that question is yes!  The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.29-37), the Judgment of the Nations (Matthew 25. 31-46), and the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16. 19-31) are just a few examples.  Jesus died for the sins of all humanity.  God doesn’t exclude anyone, and as members of his Body, the Church, we are called to follow that example.  We have a basic responsibility to our families, our communities and all of society.  We are responsible for other people, and have a duty to build societies and situations that respect the human dignity of everyone.
 
The Catechism also states that “The goods of creation are destined for the entire human race.”  (CCC 2452).  This doesn’t mean that we don’t have a right to private property, or that we can’t have nice things. It means that we have to balance our desire for possessions and goods with the needs of others.  It means balancing our wants with the basic needs of others. 
Several scripture passages provide instruction about the proper attitude we should have toward material goods. 
The Seventh Commandment states that “You shall not steal.”  (Exodus 20.15)  The Tenth Commandment states that, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house…nor anything that belongs to him.”  (Exodus 20. 17)
 
What is the proper attitude toward the possessions of other people?  It is okay to admire their possessions, or even to wish that you could have that too.  However, these commandments warn against going beyond that to actually taking the object from the person, or becoming jealous and envious of them because of their possessions.  These attitudes and actions lead us to sin.  The property of another person is to be respected and treated as you would respect and treat that person.  in some ways, the person’s property is an extension of their dignity.
The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus teaches us what our attitude should be about our own possessions. In the parable, Lazarus is a poor beggar who often begged at the door of the rich man.  The rich man dined on fine food while Lazarus starved.  When they both die, Lazarus Is rewarded with eternal comfort, while the rich man is sent to a place of eternal suffering.   The Rich Man is condemned because he lived in great comfort and did not share any of his wealth with Lazarus.  He did not recognize or attempt to uphold Lazarus’ human dignity.
 
The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus teaches us that everything we have is a gift from God.  It was given to us not solely for our use and comfort, but so that God would receive glory and praise.  Our attitude should be one of gratitude for God’s provision in our life.  And we should freely share that provision for the good of other people.  The Catechism states:  “In his use of things man should regard the external goods he legitimately owns not merely as exclusive to himself but common to others also, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as himself.” (CCC 2404)  In the ownership of property too, we are called to uphold the human dignity of others.   This too is acting as our brother’s keeper!
 
Questions:  
What is the difference between a want and a need?
What do basic human needs like food and water have to do with the dignity of a person?
How should we regard material possessions?
What is something specific you can do in your own life to be a more generous steward of the goods God has entrusted to you, so you can use them not only for yourself but to help others?
What does it mean to look upon your neighbor (without any exception) as ‘another self’?
 
Activities:
Write a reflection on these words of St. Basil the Great:  “The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.”  How does this quote challenge you to be more aware of the needs of the poor? 

Choose either Luke 10.29-37 or Matthew 25. 31-46 and write a paragraph about what it teaches you about human dignity.

Relates to Jesus:   Jesus came so that we might receive the Kingdom of God; a gift that is available to all. Jesus shows us the responsibility required in receiving this gift as His disciple, which calls us to leave everything and follow Him, for the sake of ourselves and for the betterment of our neighbors.

Relates to my Faith:   Relates to my faith: Our Catholic faith reminds us often of the necessity to look after one another in love. We need to be charitable to those that we encounter and allow that charitable selfless love to stretch us in our dealings with one another.

Sample Script:  As humans, we are born into a family which is made up of a mother and a father. This family structure can also include our siblings. Our family extends out to include our grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. The family tree continues to extend out and if one was to trace this out a couple of generations, you can have quite the list of people.
 
Our Catholic faith does just that, extending our meaning of family to be that of a human family, which in one sense includes all the baptized people in the Church past, present, and future and in another sense includes all people given life, existing as human beings endowed with a body and a soul.
 
The unity that each person shares as being human automatically places the responsibility of solidarity on you and me. Solidarity is the principle that, with regard to our human family topic, we as human persons have a shared interest together that we should be united on. This idea of solidarity within the human family includes the basic needs and rights that we each should have just because we are human. All humans should have life, food, water, shelter, clothing. Humans should not be denied love, kindness, dignity, worth. These are some of the things we as humans should be united on when we talk about solidarity.
 
Now, this idea of solidarity is not just some general, something that is done by bigger groups in a country far away. No, solidarity is to be practiced with our brothers and sisters in our very lives. Here are several ways that we can look at and approach solidarity in our own personal world:
 

• Solidarity with other people: In our daily interactions with the people around us (our family, friends, neighbors, classmates, etc… any person we interact with during our daily life), we can be people who practice and show our solidarity with the other. An example that exists here is providing care for our injured brother or sister at home after they sustained a fall, caring for their wound and spending time with them while they rest and heal. Another example can be seen in reaching out the lonely kid at school who doesn’t have friends or is picked on. Kindly reaching out to show him or her the value they possess as a fellow human can go a long way in picking up another person’s spirits.

• Solidarity with our communities: We exist in many different communities, sometimes without even realizing it. Our school community, our neighborhood community, our extracurricular activity community, our on-line gaming community; humans as social beings tend to be part of some community that has a shared interest that brings a group of people together. We can practice solidarity with our people here, sometimes these are people we haven’t even met by the way, by cleaning up the local neighborhood park so kids can play there without fear of getting injured or working to assist in picking up a family in your community who fell on hard times.


• Solidarity with our nation: Living in the United States, we exist with our brothers and sisters who live within our 50 States as one nation. While we are unified by living in the same geographical area, more or less, it can sometimes be difficult to find an area that the entire nation embraces together as one. However, we can rest assured that something that is founded on love and speaks to the betterment of the human person that is authentically true and good can be something that we the people will rally around and exist together to make happen.

Relates to Jesus:  Jesus, in His life-giving salvation that He won for us, opens for us the path to holiness which is also the path for us to discover our fulfillment in how we live our lives. Our life lived with Jesus is our path to true happiness and freedom.

Relates to my Faith:   Maintaining an active connection to the Catholic Church wins for us an active relationship with the Triune God, who loves us and seeks to have us live the divine life of grace with Him.

Sample Script:  God is a loving God who creates us in His image and likeness so that you and I can experience His divine life of grace, be in relationship with Him, and find fullness and happiness in this relationship as He journeys with you and me to help become the holy saints that we are each called to be. Our relationship with God is thus the most important relationship that we will have in this life and requires us to play an important role in forming, developing, and sustaining this relationship.
 
It is kind of funny, but one of the most difficult things about life is relationship. We are hardwired to have relationships and we find ourselves in relationship with ourselves, others, God, our pets, our hobbies, nature; the list goes on and on. Relationship is a significant part of what it means to be human. And again, relationships are often one of the toughest things about being human as our idea of relationship becomes slanted and disordered due to sin and can tend to stray away, sometimes far away, from what God intends for us in our relationships.
 
As we mentioned earlier, God desires us to be in relationship with Him so that we can encounter and live in the fullness of what love is. God is love and all He can do is love so that when we are united to Him in relationship and we receive Him openly to experience a love like no other that can be found on earth. This love of God is one that never goes dry and in fact as we experience the love of God, His love calls us to go deeper and encounter Him at an even deeper level than before. His inexhaustible love sustains us and seeks to bring us ultimately to the total love that is promised us in Heaven after we leave this earth.
 
So the question becomes, how do you and I grow in our relationship with God and experience this life of love? We need to, in a certain sense, reclaim what relationship is from our distortion that comes from sin and from a world that has molded relationship into something that is much more shallow than it really is. First, we can all agree that we want to be happy! Each of us is on a quest to find happiness for ourselves in this life, and that is good thing. Now this quest for happiness can be towards good ends (being a loving father), neutral ends (finding the best piece of pizza), or even bad ends (gambling away the last bit of the paycheck), but each of these folks is looking for happiness. In our relationship with God, Who wants you and I to be so happy, we need to seek out the things we know that make God happy and pursue these in our life. So love, peace, joy, kindness, and the list of good things that are available for you and I in this life, these are the things in which we find happiness.
 
Second, we have freedom, free will, to shape our life and relationships as we see fit. However, and certainly tied to the good-neutral-bad list of pursuits of happiness above, there is a way that leads directly to God and way that does not. By simply freely choosing to do whatever it is that we want, without any regard for God and the other and solely focusing in on the self, we freely choose the wrong path. God is love again, and love is meant to go out to others and to be shared in order to help bring others to happiness and fullness. Love, peace, joy, kindness; these are fruits to be shared with others that lead to their happiness as well as yours. God created us to be free and He desires us to freely choose Him so that we might choose the ultimate good in this life. When we pursue these goods of God, and pursue Him, we are truly free in this life to use our free will as it is geared toward the Good, and not anything else that is insufficient or not good at all. Here too it is important to say that when we have God as our center, freely focusing our life on Him, the lesser goods of this life have their proper place and we won’t underuse or overuse these (we can play video games, but for the right amount of time and once our responsibilities are finished). The bad and sinful things of this world will have little or no hold on us as we will recognize these as being apart from our relationship with God and we, being free from the chains of oppression that sinful things bind us in as being in relationship with God, will be properly detached to freely choose the good that leads to God.
 
Third and finally we realize our responsibility as children of God to use our desire for happiness and our free will in the proper order as given you and me by God as being created in His love. We are called to order our life towards God which means we need to keep Him central in and through our daily life. We need to order our free will towards the things of God and choose that which is good at each moment to keep us moving with and towards God. Our desire for happiness in this life needs to pursue the things that will fill us and bring us to the Source of all happiness. Our relationship with God needs to be a primary relationship, rooted in Mass, daily prayer, reading the Bible and learning about Saints, and performing Works of Mercy towards our brothers and sisters, as our relationship with God will order our other relationships and drive our desire to be happy toward the ultimate meaning of fulfillment; namely loving God and loving neighbor.
 
Questions:
Why is it so important to work at our relationship with God?
How do you and I grow in our relationship with God?
Consider the things that make you happy.  What about these things bring you closer to God?
How do you freely choose God in your life right now?  Do you think about Him first in all your decisions?  Do you think about Him at all?
Why do you think it is so important to love your neighbor?  How does this affect your relationship with God?
 
Activities:
Look at your answers to question 4.  Take some time in prayer and write some ideas on how you can more intentionally and deliberately consider God in your day to day life.

Together, with a friend or family member, consider two or three achievable ideas that you could do together to charitably serve others.  Discuss how these particular Works of Mercy would help you see God and help you to grow in your relationship with Him. 

Related to Jesus: Jesus is the image of the invisible God, through whom all things are made.

Related to My Faith: I am made in the image and likeness of God with a physical body and an immortal soul which gives me infinite dignity, value and worth.  God has given me the power of free will which enables me to choose or reject God and the way to Him that Jesus taught us with dramatic consequences for complete and eternal happiness or complete and eternal separation from God. The choice is mine to make.

Catechism References: CCC nos. 1699-1715

Videos:   Fr. Daniel Mahan, STL. Archdiocese of Indianapolis: Tour of the Catechism #59: Dignity of the Human Person (5m 13s)

Extra Narrative 
Human dignity is rooted in our creation by God in his image and likeness (Gen 1:28). God’s love for us is clear from the opening chapters of Genesis to our salvation in Jesus Christ written in the final chapters of the Gospels. As St. John the Evangelist writes, “…It is not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us” (1 Jn 4:10). 
Throughout human history, we have seen how cheap life can be. The human person seems to have a natural ability to cheapen life and an insatiable appetite to kill wantonly. We see this in the first human murder of brother against brother in the story of Cain and Abel where, out of jealousy, Cain kills his brother Abel, with whose sacrifice God is pleased, while Cain—for an unclear reason about which we are left to speculate—is not pleased. We will notice that this first human murder is a result of our sin entering the world. It is sin which disorders and disintegrates (think of this in two parts, dis-integrates) us. We cannot blame the evils of man against man on God. We have free will to hurt and kill one another or love each other as God desires. Either choice has second, third and many more order effects. We think of World War II, in which a handful of men with great political talent, leadership, and ability used for evil brought on the deaths of an estimated 75-80 million people all fed into the uncontrollable machine of war in only a few years. Most of these people died in unspeakable and horrible ways. All of this tragedy was the consequence of human decisions and sin. Such would not have happened had we acted in accordance with God’s desires for mankind.

“But where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (Rom 5:20). Here we think of the witness of the Christian martyrs and lives of the Saints from which the early Christian apologist, Tertullian, coined the famous saying, “The blood of the martyrs is the seedbed of the Church”. In the lives of the martyrs and of the Saints, the Church grew and much good came of it throughout the areas of the world where Christianity took root. Cultures which were once barbaric and lived savagely destroying and imprisoning their neighbors, sacrificing them to pagan gods, torturing them in unspeakable ways in many cases set those ways aside once they embraced Christ’s law of love. This is not to naively say that their Christian cultures became perfect, but they were in greater keeping with God’s will. Life on earth will always be imperfect. It is each individual's calling to do God’s will, not exercise their own power against and will over others, but exercising their freedom for the love of others.

Of all creatures on earth, God made humankind unique by endowing us with a physical body and an eternal soul animated by an eternal spirit and a free will with a vocation to eternal life with Him. He gave us an intellect with the ability to reason our way to knowledge of him. He implanted deep in our psyche a yearning for the love which can only be satisfied in him and a conscience which can know the right of his divine law from the wrong of lawlessness and sin. St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless, O God, until they rest in you.” This states the profound truth that we can never be happy unless we accept and our lives are centered on God’s love.
These qualities are actually a share in God’s divine power. We take these for granted because we are born with them and know no differently, but they are in fact a precursor of greater gifts to follow if we use them wisely in accordance with his will for them. On the other hand, the misuse of them will result in a complete and eternal loss of them. God has endowed us with these gifts to use them in the same way as he loves us. As God loves us, Jesus has given us the example and command to love fully, completely, without selfishness, seeking the good of the other. The truest and highest love, “agape” in the NT Greek, is sacrificial in nature. It is this sacrificial love to which Jesus calls us in imitation of him. This is what Jesus means when he tells us to “pick up our cross and follow him” and “unless the seed falls to the  ground and dies, it remains only a seed, but if it does, it produces much fruit” ( Mt 16:24 and Jn 12:24 respectively).  In both cases, Jesus is telling us that we must lay down our lives, our wants and desires for the sake of others. It is not what the world tells us, “Me first” or “If I don’t care about me, no one elseis going to”.  Jesus’s teaching about love is counter-cultural to our notions about self and self-seeking love. 

This gift of self to other is most profoundly to be seen in the institutions of marriage and family which is a projection and shadow of the love of the Holy Trinity. It is no wonder Satan and his forces wish to destroy them. If he can destroy them, he can destroy humanity and its dignity for it is reduced to a loss of self-identity and grounding in God’s image. What we are left with is what we are seeing in the atheist culture around us where young people cannot even distinguish their basic identity and so seek to re-invent themselves in some cases seeking to escape their own humanity.  

Contrary to this loss of identity, God’s love grounds us in his unshakeable reality. When we experience his love through his action and grace in our lives, nothing can shake us from it. But this requires an openness of our heart to His. We cannot approach the question of God with that of hostile skepticism and expect him to respond to our manipulation like a tantrum-throwing child to its parents. Rather, our relationship to God must begin with one of trust in his love for us--despite whatever difficulties and tragedies are a part of our lives. We can be sure that because of the weight and seemingly insurmountable black-hole gravity of sin in the world, we will feel the worst of its effects, but in Christ we can overcome it and live in the joy of the love God has to offer us. 

Once we find this love, we cannot keep it to ourselves. Just like God who cannot contain his love within himself, but instead desires and wills to share it in the creation of his creatures, we, too must share that love with others. The sharing of the gospel is no easy task and we can expect great and even hostile resistance to God’s message of love, but we must remember that it is our job only to sow the seeds and nourish it where we can, but it is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring the seed to fruition.

The desire for happiness that God places within each human being is only fulfilled when we fully and completely embrace God in his Holy Trinity of persons, but this happiness comes with a price. The gift itself is free, and begins with Christ’s suffering and death, but it requires our ongoing work of cooperating with God’s divine will which is found in living our lives consistent with his Divine Law of self-giving and self-sacrificing love in imitation of Christ. This Divine Law is found first and foremost in his commandments and more basically in the two most basic parts of those commandments: Love God and love neighbor. It means exercising our free will in responsible freedom. It is not “freedom to” do whatever we want (which is that freedom which is license), but “freedom for” others. That is we use our freedom to do what is right. Christ makes it clear in the gospels in what that consists: serving others. 

Simply avoiding sin is not enough. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we tell a small child not to play with this or that thing, the child will merely pick up some other thing or engage in some other activity we do not want it to pick up or do because the child does not know better and it does not know what can hurt it. Rather, we must offer the child an activity or item that will not hurt it or which is acceptable to us (and in this case) the child to keep it occupied in such a way that it will not hurt itself. Likewise, we cannot just avoid evil, we must actively seek and do what is right and good. It is only when we exercise our freedom by doing what is right and good, that we can be sure we are doing what is pleasing to God. Again, it is not because God needs this from us, but because God has created us such that when we are doing his will, we live in the happiness to which God has called us to live.