The Human Person: A Reflection

Reflection on the Human Person

I will start my reflection on the question; What is really in Man that God cares so much for us? This is the very fundamental question that most of the time I take for granted. Mainly because I live a life of security, equality (in the society, at least) and love. There are many, however, individuals living a life where their humanity, their being human, has been violated by others who does not value the Human Person. They violate because they do not understand what is really a Human Person.

In my experience in the mission immersion with the Badjao community in Cebu, I can still remember the event that really marked a scar in my heart. It was the time when their community was razed by a great fire. I saw it by myself the day after the fire many children died and the community was displaced. The Badjaos claimed that it was the government who did the fire to paved way for the construction of the South Reclamation Project, now known as the South Road Properties. A reclaimed area intended for the rich and the ‘can afford’ people. At that very moment, my young mind was awakened and had started to question are  not these Badjao people a Human Person? They too are created by God. They too are willed being and they have dignity. They could have been placed in a more decent area and not just burned and leaving them dead and homeless.

This reminded me of what Bonaventure said about the Human Person. He said that we are willed creatures, God willed us to exist. We start existing in God and will end in God. The central focus of social morals is on how we look at Human Persons. When we look at the human person as people to lord over, to take dominion over, and sometimes as ‘slave’, we do not look at them as persons with dignity. If we look at the other person in the Christian perspective, understanding the value of each individual as a creature created in the image and likeness of God, then each will have the dignity worthy of him as a person. If we look at people having a sense of dignity then we treat them as how we would like to be treated. In this way we can uplift the value of each individual as a person bearing dignity.

So for the question what is really in man that God cares so much for us, it is the act of God when he breathed His spirit on us, giving us the right to be called Human Persons. This life/breath that we have comes from Him alone. It is important for us to understand this very foundation of the human persons in order that our acts and judgments will look at each and every individual as what he or she really is; a creature of God, created in His image and likeness, and with dignity.

Reflection submitted to Social Morals class...

-danielangelolao