The Human Self, One, Irreplaceble

"I would know you in order to know myself."

The word person has great significance. "Today our way of thinking about people is defined in quantity...so many thousands, millions...yet there is always one, human person indivisible." That person is unique, irreplaceable, the creation of which remains a metaphysical mystery.
Persons may be described and regarded as form, physical bodies, not unlike other bodies, both animate and inanimate. However in the individual a development takes place. The development of thought, knowledge and intellect takes place on a deeper level in the person.
All are on the developmental plane as persons. Even the least gifted person whom we may meet belongs to this great human reality of the person in development.

Is each human person really created in the image and likeness of God, the Creator? While man may not deny his link to nature, and resemblance to the world known in past times as the animal world, it is not possible to integrate all that a person possesses without recognition of the "something more" that defines him.
The something more which defines him may be called the conscience. A person is, in the view of theologian and philosopher, Karol Wotjyla in fact, conscience. The conscience provides the definitive structure which differentiates the person from other elements in the created world. It is the basis of the definitive and unrepeatable I.

A story that comes out of the World War II era, one from a Polish concentration camp, recounted by Max Kolbe regarding his own execution by a camp executioner. Both he and the executioner were human beings, each presumably with a conscience. On one hand, one is one admired and esteemed for his faith and courage in horrible circumstances; the other is a person to be rejected by others of every faith, scorned and repudiated.

The greatness or smallness of a person is first developed within his conscience. When considering this notion, we must look to the ends of its development, that is in death. Is then death the full ends of a person? Is it in fact a defining reality? The materialism of the world sees death as an end, so much so that a person's life is a steady progression towards its inevitable end in death, beyond which there is nothing.
The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches in the Tanakh or Old Testament book, Genesis, "You are dust, and to dust you will return."
But if death is really the final end, then what happens to lead one to a final heroic act of faith and courage, and another to play the part of executioner, halting a life?
What about good and evil?
The French thinker and writer, Jean Paul Sartre wrote that man aspires to that which he defines as God, "even if this is an empty word, so that it is a useless passion." Yet persons are multidimensional. They develop slowly, unevenly; they develop judgment and wisdom over time. That development is the beginnings of eternal life.
In the course of a person's development he comes to know that there is a tree, if you like, of good and evil; he finds that at any turn he may choose good or evil. This knowledge, these decisions, and actions are of value. They present a person with either the good, or the evil as value.
Indeed human life is lived between good and evil. Human beings are great because they can freely choose, they possess what Augustine of Hippo called, free will.
 Despite the will and the ability to choose, man, in knowledge, has chosen evil; he has played the executioner. In a certain sense, the ability to choose evil testifies to man's greatness in freedom.

Yet freedom calls, requires something of the chooser. It exacts a price. In evil we are cut off from the source of life, from love, from co-union with the Creator. The created are then exceeded in the bounds of the "tree."
The God of the Bible remains steadfast in regard to his creations. He does not cut himself off from them; he is more like the story of a lover seeking his beloved, the Song of Songs, his lost child. He looks everywhere for him.
His first and last thoughts are for the Beloved, his creation. The precepts of the Bible, of the Buddha, have come into the world to lead the Way to our redemption, our enlightenment, to our peace, our joy, our rest in the One.
--paraphrased from The Way to Christ by Karol Wojtyla

Monotheism and John Paul

Christian, spiritual leader to more than a billion of the world's population, Pope John Paul II led the Catholic Church into new, modern territory. Some think that among his vast flock, he will be long regarded as 'the good Pope.' He was an important architect of the renovation and reform of the Church in 1962 through 1964. Finding the new age to have wants of its own and recognizing the need for change and relevance, She (the Church) set upon the sweeping reforms widely known as 'Vatican II.' Churchmen, laity, religious monks, brothers and nuns, were one and all swept into the 'body of Christ.' Playing his part, the young bishop of Krakow, Poland Karol Wotjyla, surprised the convocation by finding a voice in that great assembly. Thoroughly modern, he called for another way.

Recollecting his time as a Cleric and his views as Pope John Paul II, Karol Wotjlya, wrote in his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, "the Church has a high regard for for the Muslims, who worship one God, living and subsistent, merciful and omnipotent, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. As  a result of their monotheism  believers in Allah are particularly close to us... some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran [Qur'an], but he is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only majesty, never Emmanuel, God is with Us. Islam is not a religion of Redemption... Jesus is mentioned, but only as a Prophet... for this reason, not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity."

The Council [Vatican II] has also called the Church to have a dialog with the followers of the Prophet." And She has done so. "To work toward mutual understanding, as well as the preservation and promotion of social justice, moral welfare, peace, and freedom for the benefit of all mankind." John Paul continues his thoughts to express concern for countries "where fundamentalist movements come to power, human rights and the principle of religious freedom are interpreted... make reciprocal contacts very difficult... the Church remains open to dialog."

Regarding the Jewish people, John Paul speaks of them as "our elder brothers in the faith." And in a typically Christian way, he interprets the Covenant of Abraham, the Covenant at Sinai, the Prophets, the sacred Scripture, as the old versus the new covenant. "The one whom God would send in the fullness of time," Galations 4:4. Yet for the Jewish believer, there is only One Covenant; it is outlined and inscribed in the Tenakh. And the Church remains a powerful voice for monotheism today.

Evil Love

"A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being."
--Love and Responsibility
by Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II

Love and truth, writes Karol Wojtyla, are inseparable. "When we speak of truth in attraction, it is essential ... that the attraction not be limited to partial values, to something inherent in a person, but not to the person as a whole... there must be a direct attraction to the whole person... And the person as an entity, and hence as a good, is different from all that is not a person... The object of attraction which is seen as a good, is also seen as a thing of beauty. This is very important in the attraction on which love between masculine and feminine is based... A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being."

A woman, reckons Wojtyla, may be beautiful in a way all her own, and a man attracted to her through her beauty. Likewise, a man is also beautiful in his own particular way. This beauty must necessarily include the entirety of the individual, not merely his physical nature. Desire also belongs to true love; it is perhaps the most powerful component of human love; this is true because we are all limited beings, social beings and we have need for others. And yet love between man and woman would prove evil, if it went no further than love as desire; it is not enough to love and desire others as a good for yourself, one must however long for and seek that person's good. If this is not present, then an egoism exists.

Genuine love completes the life and enlarges the existence of a person. Love given and received in friendship, in goodwill, with desire, are closely connected. How so? If for example, one person desires another as a good for himself, then they must want that person to be a true good, not false goods. Goodwill is indeed free of self interest, it is selflessness in love. Such love is the love which does the most good to those who experience it; both persons are fulfilled in the exchange.

Evil may generally be defined as the sum of opposition to the genuine needs and desires of individuals. Evil seeks not acquisition but loss or deprivation of an otherwise good. Thus truth is the antithesis of evil. In love, truth is the factor which balances its parts, such as desire, friendship, good will, attraction, tenderness among others. One may, in truth, realize what one experiences to be genuine good or not. Truth allows for the objective evaluation of a possible good, and contrasts that good against its opposite. Thus, in the Christian mind, God is the ultimate; his love is truth to which Christians may aspire.

Sensuality, Sentiment and Love

"Sentimentality must be clearly distinguished from love"  --Karol Wojtyla

So much of our deepest, spiritual longings center around acceptance, both of self and other. We want to freely love and be loved, what some call "unconditional love."

Yet in the everyday world, in the practice life, this can be confusing, contradictory even. We consider the element of free will and its role in love, yet with free will and our natural responses to others, love and sex can become disordered, confused for something that it ultimately may not be. 

Writing in his book, Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla notes that, "however, as we know, a human person cannot be an object for use. Now, the body is an integral part, and so must not be treated as if it were detached from the whole person." 

Doing so threatens to devalue a person. Let me say here, there is no such thing as pure sensuality, such exists in animals and is their proper instinct. What is "completely natural to animals is then, sub-natural to humans." 

This is to say that sensuality by itself, while a natural response to a body of the opposite sex, is not love. Sensuality may be love when it is open to inclusion of the other elements such as desire, friendship, good will, patience, understanding, and so forth.
Alone, sensuality is notoriously fickle, seeing only a body, turning to it simply as a possible object of enjoyment. And it is not only the physical presence of a body which may trigger sensuality, "but also the inner senses such as emotion and imagination (a sense-impression); with their assistance, one can make contact with a body of a person not physically present."

However this does not go to show that "sensuality is morally wrong itself. An exuberant, and readily roused sensual nature is the making for a rich, if not more difficult, personal life." Sensuality can indeed be a factor for making a free will love, an ardent and fully formed love.

Sentimentality as an experience must be and is clearly distinct from sensuality. As previously stated, a sense-impression typically accompanies an emotional response (a "value" response). Direct contact by persons of the opposite sex are always accompanied by a direct impression which may be an emotion. The inclination to respond to sexual values such as masculine or feminine, should be called sentiment. 

Sentimental susceptibility is the the source of affection between persons. In contrast to sensuality where the most immediate sense-impression is perhaps the body, sentimental regard views the person as a whole; it includes the body in its sense-impression, but does not limit itself to that aspect.
Sexual value then continues as the totality, the oneness of the person. Affection is not an urge to consume.

It is appreciative, it therefore goes with the values ascribed to beauty, to a strong feeling and value for a person in their masculine or feminine natures. 

However in affection, in sentimentality, a different desire than simple use or lust is evident; it is the desire for proximity, for nearness, a longing to be together in a physical presence. Sentimental love "keeps two people close together, it binds them, even if they are physically far apart. 

This love causes them to move in a similar orbit. It embraces memory, imagination and also communicates with the will." Tolerance, understanding and tenderness enter into their relationship. Being a love not wholly focused on the body, this love is sometimes called spiritual love. 

However with distance, sentimental love may turn to disillusionment. So it is not always immediately apparent that a particular sentimental love is really able to discern the true, inner values of a person. Thus love cannot be "largely a form of sex-appeal."
For a human love to grow, Wojtyla says, "it must become integrated, a whole to a whole, person to person." 

Without this developing integration, a love is not a durable, human love; thus it simply dies.