Category: personal reflection

In Part I of this series, we spent a lot of time considering what it means to be human. After all, we can’t live a good life unless we know what exactly this life is.

There is a good reason we dwelled so long on the point that each of us is a soul made in God’s image. These days, our lives are moderated by screens, media, and artificial AI online search results. The reality of God becomes more and more distant. As we master ever-greater challenges in medicine, energy, manufacturing, and idea generation, God seems irrelevant. It feels like we don’t need him; maybe we never have.

But we continue to have experiences we can’t explain, much less master: love, pain, joy. Our souls soar when we hear sublime music, expand when we reach out to someone in need, and yearn for deep meaning. For those who have ears to hear, these movements of the soul are growing pains as we respond to God’s calling out to us.

We begin to remember that being human is more than using our fancy technology to make our days easier and more comfortable. Slowly, we open ourselves up to the realization that God made us in a great love story, one of a nearly unimaginable scope. And then we realize that the God man, Jesus Christ, has made a path back to the Father for us. And he is, even now, at work in our souls, helping us find that path.

And, once you have been baptized, your fundamental reality has changed. You no longer have a soul unfit for Heaven. You have died to the life of sin and have received a new life in the Spirit. So we must live in this new reality, contemplating the meaning of life from this perspective. As St. Paul writes, “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:1-2).

Three primary sources guide Christians through God’s love story for humanity, and, by extension, the meaning of life:

1. The Old Testament, with Christ as God’s Word, reveals how he established all Creation, guided the Jews in their faithfulness, and prepared the world for his coming in the flesh.
2. The New Testament reveals Christ’s work as the Word Made Flesh — giving us his words and actions, testifying to his Resurrection, and ushering in a world made new in his Spirit.
3. The theological writings of the Church, inspired and guided by his Spirit, reveal even more about the spiritual significance of Christ’s coming — helping us understand what it means to be a Christian and how God wants us to grow towards perfection as we ready ourselves to stand in His presence.

Many of us know the first two fairly well, but since we’ve had 2,000 years of writings from the Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church, the Magisterium, and individual popes, bishops and saints, it’s a fairly impossible task to fully know the rich theological writings of the Church. But, little by little, when we open ourselves to these writings, we can gain great insights.

In this reflection, we will look at some of the New Testament, but also weave in theology and practice of the Church after the time of the New Testament. It’s important to remember that these are all one fluid movement: Christ’s words and actions, as recorded in the New Testament, instituted liturgical acts and sacraments of the Church. What’s more, over time, his Spirit revealed to Church Fathers the deeper meaning of both Christ’s life and the liturgy/sacramental life of the Church. (As a side note, anyone interested on the differences between authentic development of Church doctrine over time versus innovative corruptions should read Saint John Henry Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.)

To pick up our discussion on how to live a good life, even if we agree that our fundamental reality is having an immortal soul (so often ignored, like a withered limb) made according to the very template of God, we must wonder how humanity can have fallen so far from the potential within us. How can we possibly re-configure our lives according to that divine template?

We see that Jesus Christ provides the answer quite plainly. During the Last Supper, he tells the Apostle Thomas: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Let’s understand how to live a good life by examining this statement from Jesus, piece by piece.

“I am …”

Let’s not cruise past the first two syllables Jesus speaks. These are the most important words in all of history: God’s revelation of himself! We recall that God identifies himself this way when Moses asks his name. Jesus reveals that he, too, is this same singular God.

There are seven so-called “metaphorical I-AM statements” in John. These are when he says, I am …

There are three other important I-AM statements in John. The first is when he affirms that he is the Messiah, speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well. The second is when he tells the Jews in the temple, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). There’s no way to interpret this statement differently or metaphorically. The third is in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Judas brings the guards. Jesus asks who they are looking for, and he answers “I AM.” At this point, they are struck with the fear of God in his presence and fall down to the ground. John could not be clearer about Jesus’s divinity.

1. The bread of life
2. The light of the world
3. The gate
4. The good shepherd
5. The resurrection and the life
6. The way, the truth, and the life
7. The true vine

As Catholics, we understand these to be more than metaphors and analogies, of course. Medieval theologians described four ways of understanding sacred texts: literal, analogical, tropological (i.e., moral lessons), and anagogical (i.e., mystical significance, spiritual ascendence). In these I-AM statements, we see all four meanings at play.

As we look at the rest of this statement, let’s remember that it’s more than mere metaphor. This is God Himself talking, and there are literal, tropological and anagogical meanings to grasp.

The Way

When I was younger, the sheer grammatical incompatibility of “a person = a way” threw me for a loop. The comparison was unequal somehow (one finite person to a lifetime’s worth of choices and actions). Now, however, I think it’s one of the most apt metaphorical/ literal/ tropological/ anagogical statements in the entire Bible.

The Apostolic followers of Christ thought so, too, since they called themselves the followers of the Way long before the term “Christian” came into use.

Let’s consider a few ways that Christ’s statement makes sense. On the most obvious level of metaphor, saying he is the Way clues us into the fact that he serves a very practical purpose for us — that we should model our lives on his. This forces us to consider Christ’s entire ministry. We begin to recall all of his examples and parables and realize that not a single word has been wasted or should be overlooked. We also look at his actions during his Passion and see a nearly superhuman example of love, acceptance of suffering, and refusal for retribution. This Way has endless depths for us to discover.

But the way towards what? The tropological meaning here would be a moral example: the selfless love of Christ is the way to be a morally good person. Concerning the eternal life of the soul, however, the anagogical understanding is that this is the way back to God, the way to Heaven.

Jesus, in his very being, is the way back to God. We should contemplate this statement slowly and carefully throughout our lives. To be the way back to God means that his entire being is about giving himself back to the Father. To be the way for us back to God means that he has the spiritual power to take us back to the Father if we unite ourselves to him (this is beyond our ability!).

There is also the literal level here! Jesus makes himself available to us spiritually through the sacraments and they are the literal things we do in this life as Christians. We eat his Body and Blood for spiritual food. They are the Way to remain spiritually healthy. We belong to the Church, a spiritual community of believers known as the Body of Christ, with him as the head. We are marching through life via Christ.

I praise God’s genius for his “I am the Way” statement because it draws us deeper into the mystery of the Trinity and deeper into the template for the Christian life.

To our overall question of how to live a good life, this seems to provide the quick answer: be like Christ. But there is still more to understand, because any creature can imitate, but we must do more than ape the Savior.

The Truth

Dominicans rejoice! This is one of the most important mottos of the Dominican Order: Veritas. St. Dominic founded the order of preachers to help save souls in southern France and beyond who were straying from the truthful, orthodox teaching of the Church and therefore in danger of losing their way back to God for eternity.

St. Dominic (and many other saints) realized that God entrusted us with specific truths that we have to uphold and defend if we want to be his true sons and daughters. God entrusted his Chosen People with these truths through the Ten Commandments and culminated his sharing of truths in the person of Jesus Christ.

And don’t be caught up in the Protestant trap that the Bible alone holds all the truth. Jesus entrusted his Bride, the Church, with what we call tradition, that is, doctrine, rituals, and meanings of his ministry passed along in words and acts, distinct from the recorded Bible writings. Several times in the New Testament, the evangelists tell us that he shared deeper truths with the Apostles that were not written down. The Church has been shepherding and protecting these teachings dutifully from the time of Christ to the present. All of these truths come directly from Jesus Christ.

I’ve been talking about “truths,” but Jesus didn’t say, “I am giving you the truths.” He said, I am the Truth, with a capital T. This signifies an ontological and metaphysical reality we must understand. It’s time to examine the literal meaning here.

First, ontology — that is, the study of being. “Jesus is the Truth” means that there is a divine being who is truth itself. This means that absolute truth fundamentally exists, too. This bear repeating: Jesus tell us that this abstract universal thing called truth is actually him. Whoa!

If we read the Bible or listen at church, we are somewhat prepared for this. In the Old Testament, we have an entire Book of Wisdom, where King Solomon describes wisdom in terms we could also see applied to truth: “There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good … For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty” (Wisdom 7:22, 25). To this point of Jesus is also identified with God’s wisdom. The Church proclaims the wisdom of the Cross, based on St. Paul: “to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24).

Jesus is both a historical man, born in time, and the timeless abstraction of truth itself. This is no small thing to comprehend.

Second, metaphysics (the study of reality and existence). How does the fact that Christ is the universal essence of Truth impact or change our reality? For one thing, we have to be more careful with how we use the word truth and how we think about it. Nowadays, truth is a slippery, often subjective thing. Think of people saying, “well, that’s your truth, not mine.” I think we need to stop saying things like this. “Truth” does not equal your opinion or your perspective. We have the added pressure of a juridical meaning of truth, often arrived at by consensus or through provable facts. This is not what we’re talking about, either — Truth is not determined by a courtroom or a jury or a compilation of evidence.

“Jesus is Truth” means that truth is not in the eye of the beholder. Truth is not relative. Ask yourself if you believe this. If not, that’s a problem, because these are Jesus’s own words. Pure and absolute truth actually exists, and is found in the person of Christ.

Is this just a pretty metaphor? No. Consider the God who made the universe. His Word made the universe — all the fundamental laws of physics, staggering in their complexity, all the rules of math and order and life and death. Only a being that is also truth itself could accomplish creation. Any falsehood, and the universe wouldn’t work.

So how does this knowledge help us live a good life? This provides the certainty that the Way is the right one. The very source of the logic, math, and beauty that created the world is within the Christ, who is our Way. Everything he teaches and does, from the epic acts of suffering out of love to the tiniest detail of his conversations, teaches us about truth. We must study and pray to know him better.

The Life

Much like our discussion of the universal thing called truth, we have to realize that “life” is more than just a person’s span of days. When Jesus says, “I am the life,” he is referring to the animating spirit of being that makes anything and everything exist. This is life with a capital L and it doesn’t end. But this universal thing called Life is more than just an animating force — it is God himself, holding all things in existence simply by his will.

From this statement, we learn that living a good life entails more than we thought at first. Just by using that word “life,” we unwittingly acknowledge that we are living something beyond us, something that is by all rights God’s, not ours. We are living a thing that is a gift from God — sharing in the ecstatic will of God that existed before time began and will exist forever.

Thought of in this way, living a good life is more akin to being a perfect guest than throwing yourself a big party. It’s not your party.

It’s more like sailing a ship in an armada that existed long before you and will exist long after you’re gone than it is like “whatever floats your boat.” It’s not your boat.

We begin to see why Christ was such a fan of parables. How else to explain concepts so much deeper than our minds and routines can imagine?

If “life” is this thing whose source is far beyond us, surely it is also mine and yours for a time, too. And here is a great connection. We have a finite life in this world, and while its pleasures and sadnesses are great, it points to something greater. God gave us Jesus to explain this and give us a model for participating in his life in the best way possible.

Participation, Not Ownership

Our life is a part of his great will. While it is also “mine” and “yours,” we have no true ownership over it. It is “ours” in the sense that we can lose it, waste it, or gain eternity through it. Truly, it is His. After all, he is Being itself and holds the entire universe together simply because he wills it.

So, in a nutshell, living a good life means participating meaningfully and prayerfully in the great things that come from God.

Beyond the doing the things of the Way (prayer, sacrifice, love, etc.), there is the question of how to comport ourselves in this life. That is also a “way” and, again, Christ is our model. As St. Paul writes, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself,” (Philippians 1:6-7). Christ didn’t exploit the fact that he was God in order to make his life easier or to fix everything wrong in the world. He “emptied himself,” which is called kenosis in Greek and it turns out this is the Way each of the persons of the Trinity operates. They empty themselves out in love for one another and in love for creation.

This is the Way. Emptying ourselves for the good of the world and the good of God is the great lesson Christ gives us. It is about humility, not lording our lives and power over others, but reveling in doing God’s will.

“It’s my life and my rules” is a stunted philosophy that misses the great depth of the gift we’ve been given. “May I decrease while he increases” is the philosophy that John the Baptist gives us, and one much more appropriate for living a good life.

Supernatural Help

But, seriously, being humble and emptying ourselves for the good of others is hard. It’s almost counter-intuitive when you first start doing it. How are we supposed to do this thing that only God seems capable of doing?

Thankfully, we have supernatural help every day of our lives. Christ instituted the sacraments during his life on earth as the means by which we receive the help to live our lives well. These are not rituals we do just because everyone else we know does them. We shouldn’t be receiving the Eucharist and going to confession simply because we think we should.

When we acknowledge the purposeful, pointed, and life-generating significance of the sacraments, we start to understand that they are like 75% of being a good Christian and living a good life. OK, I made up that statistic, but you get my point. (Protestants, please take heed. Calling the sacraments “symbols” makes Christianity little more than a self-help class).

If you’re Catholic, at one point in your life you were explained the significance of each sacrament. If you’re not, an RCIA class can do a much better job than I can here. Nonetheless, let’s remind ourselves of the highlights:

Baptism. Even for those baptized at birth, the spiritual effects of this sacrament are life-changing. St. Didymus the Blind (c. 310-395) writes in his treatise On the Trinity:

“The Holy Spirit renews us in baptism through his godhead, which he shares with the Father and the Son. Finding us in a state of deformity, the Spirit restores our original beauty and fills us with his grace, leaving no room for anything unworthy of our love. The Spirit frees us from sin and death, and changes us from the earthly men we were, men of dust and ashes, into spiritual men, sharers in the divine glory, sons and heirs of God the Father who bear a likeness to the Son and are his co-heirs and brothers, destined to reign with him and to share his glory.”

If anyone asks you if baptism is really that important, point them to the passage above.

Confirmation. Many Catholics have a hard time explaining the significance of confirmation. The best way to see it is as our catechism teaches: “the effect of the sacrament of Confirmation is the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost” (CCC 1302). Baptism initiates us into the Christian life and Confirmation binds us more deeply, conferring on us the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Even if our intellect and wisdom are not fully developed as children, we are spiritually ready to proclaim the Gospel with confidence like the Apostles did after Pentecost.

The Eucharist. We ask God the Father to “give us this day our daily bread” and, as usual, he responds with abundance beyond our imaginings. The entire scope of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and offering of eternal life are wrapped up in the Holy Eucharist, given to us as spiritual food to help us accomplish the hard work of loving our neighbor, turning the other cheek and being humble.

The Eucharist is such an important spiritual gift that our catechism tells us it is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324). But a word of caution! Faith in Christ and in his sacramental gift are required! As St. Ephrem the Syrian (306-373 AD) writes, “Take, eat, entertaining no doubt of faith, because this is My Body, and whoever eats it in belief eats in it Fire and Spirit. But if any doubter eat of it, for him it will be only bread.”

Participation in the sacraments demands faith — not just showing up, not just taking the communion host.

Penance and Reconciliation. Where would we be without the confessional? I thank God every day that Jesus Christ instituted this sacrament and bestowed the power to forgive sins upon the Apostles: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:22-23). God knows that we have a tendency to sin, to abuse the freedom of will that he bestowed on us, and in his great mercy he has given the Church the ability to purify our souls from any sins after Baptism.

We noted above how Jesus is the Truth. Consider how the Sacrament of Penance invites us to bring this Truth into our hearts and speak the Truth with our mouths. Many are scared to admit to a priest (or to themselves) how imperfect they really are, but as we follow the Way, we absolutely must embrace this sacrament fully. The saints, many whom we would consider perfect, are the ones who most vocally advocate for their need of forgiveness. And if they need it, surely all of us do.

Anointing of the Sick. For very sick Christians, the Church provides this sacrament as both a consolation and a spiritual aid in achieving Heaven. Styled on Jesus’s many healing works, a priest uses holy oil and prayer to implore God to save the sick and dying person. This ancient sacrament comes directly from St. James: “Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven” (James 5:14-15). What a precious sacrament as the end of our time on this earth hovers close!

Holy Orders and Marriage. These are vocations that require our spiritual effort, and when done sacramentally, sealed by the Spirit and renewed constantly in prayer and devotion to God, we can accomplish them in ways otherwise unreachable. They are sacraments because we require God’s grace and help to do them as He intends, whole heartedly and selflessly. What’s more, a “sacramental vocation” is shorthand for a life devoted to God. In other words, simply by being married in the Catholic Church or becoming a priest, nun, monk or sister, a person is living a good life.

It’s All About Grace

How do the sacraments accomplish all of this, you might ask? They are spiritually effective because it is God Himself doing the work. The priest acts in persona Christi when celebrating Mass and it is Christ who sanctifies the gifts at the altar. The Holy Spirit is the agent of Baptism, working through the sign of water to purify the candidate. In each sacrament, God is the power that strengthens and anoints us.

You see, God isn’t separate from us, especially not if we are Christian. God, as Being itself, suffuses all of creation with Himself and his Spirit. When we accept his Son, Jesus Christ, as our God, we open our hearts to be filled more fully; we open our souls to be formed in Christ’s image — something that he himself is doing! All we have to do is say, “Yes, I accept your will and participate with my own will joined to yours.”

God then gives us himself in the form of grace. The most important form of grace is called sanctifying grace, bestowed at Baptism. This is the Holy Spirit himself, infused into our souls to create a permanent disposition of the soul that makes it fit to enter Heaven. This grace doesn’t go away unless we commit a mortal sin. Then, we need the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation in order to return to what we call a “state of grace.”

And there are other forms of grace. These are divine interventions in our lives — like a nudge from God to help us avoid evil, do good, or turn back to Him. Perhaps it’s an inspiration of some sort, a sudden urge to pray, or a feeling of remorse. These are temporary helps from God, and living a good life means that we tune into the graces surrounding all of us in this life. The more receptive and perceptive we are to grace, the more we are able to listen to God, to act faithfully, and to properly revere Him as our God and Savior.

Finally, there the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, known as special graces or charisms: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

Once you become aware of how God is the very fabric of our everyday lives, it’s hard to think that he is some type of far-off, uninvolved Godhead. It becomes more and more clear how you can meaningfully participate in God’s gift of life. It becomes more and more rewarding to realize that you are starting to live a good life and walk the Way intended for you, yoked to Christ at your side.

No one comes to the Father except through me

We can’t forget the end of Jesus’s answer to St. Thomas. It’s a terribly important point, and the whole reason Christians have grown from a group of disciples to a worldwide Church. We evangelize because we believe in this statement. We evangelize because we want everyone to come to the Father, and the only Way is through his Son.

It’s not fashionable today to say one way is better than others. “Inclusion” is the idol of the moment. Don’t get me wrong — the Church is universal and open to everyone, regardless of race, sexual orientation, or anything else. Good Christians should reach out to every human being, even enemies, and bring Christ into their lives. But being inclusive in your approach is different than saying that inclusion is the most important factor to consider or quality for a person to uphold. This latter belief makes inclusion an ideology rather than a component of a good life.

Jesus Christ is the most important factor to consider. He is the most important quality for a person to uphold. In Jesus, we find love, truth, life and divinity.

When Jesus says, “no one comes to the Father except through me,” we should be reading all levels of this statement once again: literal, metaphorical, tropological, and anagogical.

• Literal: Jesus is just telling us the truth. There will be a Final Judgement and the Father has appointed his Son the judge of souls.
• Metaphorical: This is consistent with his “I am the Way” statement, in that we need to conform our souls to his example in order to reach Heaven with the Father. For those who do not know Jesus Christ, this puts them in peril.
• Tropological: The moral aspect of this statement is that we must act in a way consistent with what God intended for us as his children. This brings us back to having souls made in his image. Christ can help us live this life in a way where our souls are reaching their potential as sons and daughters of God.
• Anagogical: the mystical and eschatological meaning of this statement is clear, since “coming to the Father” is equivalent with achieving Heaven for eternity. If we want to return to our Father, we need Christ’s help in cleansing and re-configuring our souls for reunification with the Father.

So, while this isn’t a statement to the effect, “if you’re not Catholic, you’re going to Hell,” it does have rather serious implications. In the end, we are not the judge. Christ is. We can’t tell each other who is saved and who is not.

But Christ will.

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In the first reflection of this series on how to live a good life, we considered that the core of our being exists because of God and no good life could happen without that being the crux of the equation. In this reflection, we considered how Christ is the Way to a good life — literally, metaphorically and more. Next, we will uncover how to pursue virtue as a practical way to live a good life — How to Live a Good Life, Part III: Living a Virtuous Life.

In other words,

• Step one: focus on God and Jesus Christ.
• Step two: be Catholic.
• Step three: strive for sainthood.

Not to sound like the opening to a lame college graduation speech, but let’s look at Socrates’ famous quote, “A life unexamined is not worth living.” I’d argue — on a basic level — an unexamined life is impossible. Self-examination is baked into who we are. Even those who willfully push away this question in a bid to live in the moment will be haunted by the specter of that self-examination on their deathbeds.

It’s one of the things that makes us human, not animal: the ability to think abstractly about our purpose beyond what’s immediately in front of us.

On a biological level, our first “purpose” in life is to feed ourselves. Also, we have a voracious need to learn. The intellect and the body grow together. But even in young children, there is a desire for something else, a desire to understand our place and our direction. Think of the common toddler refrain, “why?” Teenagers demand the freedom to figure things out for themselves, and then adults return to the question again and again: What is my purpose in life? We share a basic human need to know what we’re doing on this earth.

Some might argue an exception that disproves my theory: people caught in a cycle of poverty don’t have the luxury of self-reflection, they say; the poor have to focus exclusively on getting food, water and shelter. But this isn’t true.

I’ve spent some time working with destitute people, specifically in Guatemala, but also via interviews with families in Africa, Haiti, the Philippines and elsewhere. They have just as much of an interest in their purpose in life as anyone in a first-world country. Impoverished people desperately need food, clean water, shelter and education, but they also respond deeply to spiritual nourishment, to beauty, to community. They have other needs that must be fed.

This demonstrates that self-reflection isn’t a “leisure activity.” It’s fundamentally human. Practically speaking, it helps us develop and adjust a long-term plan for our lives. But more than this, it scratches a deeper itch, some type of baked-in urge that needs to be understood.

We have an inborn sense of a purpose or “end” towards which we should strive. Figuring out that ultimate “end” is important. Every act and thought is influenced, either subconsciously or consciously, by decisions about our purpose in life.

Some Hints

If this desire to know and pursue an ultimate end is something we all share, then perhaps we should examine what else we share in order to dig into the question of our purpose. This is a good exercise, and something contrary to the advice, “find your own purpose,” or “you do you.”

The “you do you” approach assumes that personal autonomy is the most important ethical and moral rule. That everything good will flow from us simply having the power to make our own decisions. That we can make our own ethical and moral frameworks rather than fitting ourselves inside an existing one handed to us from society or religion.

But this, as we have seen in history, only creates monsters. If everyone believes himself or herself to be the source of their own code, there is no common thread tying society together. One person might thing stealing is bad while another thinks all goods should be shared and therefore there is no stealing. Societies can’t exist, much less thrive, in such environments.

So, let’s go the other direction. Maybe we can better define what we share — what it means to be human — so that we can best discover our ultimate purpose. This doesn’t destroy individuality! Think of a soccer team: everyone has the same purpose (to win the game), but people fill different roles, have different talents, and act according to the specific circumstances of the day, the others around them, etc.

So, we looked at some biological needs, but we share needs (“purposes”) beyond the simply biological ones. Here’s a short list of needs, and some pitfalls with getting hung up on just one or another of them. In short, we need to take these as signposts to get to a better definition of what it means to be human.

• Intellectual stimulation. This isn’t just “learning” for practical application. It can be puzzles, entertainment, and conversation. Some people seek their ultimate purpose in life attending to this need — consider historians, writers, entertainers, detectives, university professors, and many more. But is this all there is?
• A feeling of self-worth. While there are many ways to find self-worth, an example of people who take this need to the extreme would be those addicted to competition and success, whether in sports, business or social standing. Inevitably, these endeavors can feel self-centered and therefore a little shallow.
• A feeling of contributing to something greater. Those finding their purpose in this need might be soldiers, officers, politicians, and business executives. This includes an aspect of service, putting the good of the many ahead of oneself. But no city, country, army or company lasts forever. They are always corruptible and have no true identity outside of their functioning. Surely simply contributing to an institution can’t be the purpose for humans.
• A feeling of belonging to something greater. Many movements and ideologies capitalize on this desire — from the green movement to white supremacy, from a dinner group with trusted friends to a church full of neighbors. Like the previous example, this purpose satisfies a primal component of being human: we are social creatures. Belonging to something greater is a sign that we care about our society. But, as the examples testify, these can be good and bad, effective and ineffective. We have to discern what type of “something greater” is truly worthy of our participation.
• To love and be loved. Of all the examples of purpose beyond the biological needs of humans, this one is the most complete. There is a “rightness” we experience when we love and when we are loved. It’s more than brain chemistry (which undoubtedly also changes), and it’s more than an emotional high. With love, we can experience a panoply of things beyond intellect and bodily senses: wonder, gratitude, humility, courage, strength, comfort, etc. What’s more, we can even experience everything else on our short list: intellectual stimulation (love surprises us every time we encounter it), self-worth, contributing to something greater and belonging to something greater.

Love is clearly a key component in finding our purpose in life. Some would say it is enough. But undisciplined love — that is, love without understanding — can be as bad as all the rest. After all, what is narcissism but an excess of love of oneself? And what is genocide but an excess of love for one’s tribe?

The Full Measure of What it Means to Be Human

Hopefully we’ve demonstrated that being human is more than just biological needs and also more than just intellectual ones. So, being human means we are a body, a mind, and something else. Our ancestors put a name to what we’ve been dancing around: a soul.

It’s a shame that so many people “turn off” when they hear that word. It’s a very helpful way of understanding who we are. As the Church teaches, humans are an ensouled body. Or an embodied soul. It is not a “part” of us, something that can be extracted like the Proton Pack and Ghost Trap used by the Ghostbusters. Instead, the soul is the organizing principle that gives life to our bodies (without it, we’d be a bunch of goo and bones with no life). Traditionally understood, the soul also contains our intellect and will.

When we think about a person, we are really thinking about their soul more than their bodies. Their bodies can change, decay, and even stop working, but we still know who they are. The soul is a more accurate description of the person as we think of them.

Let’s consider a few time-tested descriptions of the soul and God.

Aristotle, back in 350 BC, laid out the template that was later incorporated by St. Thomas Aquinas and the Church: plants have a “vegetative soul,” which enables reproduction and growth. Animals have these faculties plus a “sensitive soul,” which enables them to move and sense the world around them. But humans alone have a “rational soul,” which gives us thought and reflection in addition to these other attributes.

This rational soul is the very thing that contains and contemplates the topic of this essay: what is my purpose?

Aristotle also talks of a Prime Mover, or Unmoved Mover, which is perfect, eternal thought. It is the ultimate object of love and desire, and the entire universe strives to imitate its perfection. Think of this Unmoved Mover as a very abstract god-force, if you will, which doesn’t sully itself with practical matters of creation or human history.

Thus, while Aristotle gives us a very helpful description of the rational soul, it sort-of appears out of nowhere. There is no connection to a broader scheme or purpose.

Compare this to some of the world’s earliest written creation stories, written many thousands of years before the age of the Greek philosophers. These describe a God who is much more involved in the creation of the rational soul. In the Fertile Crescent, the Babylonians, Akkadians, Sumerians and Semitic peoples are surprisingly consistent in describing how humans were created from the clay of the earth by a God (or gods) who had a particular intent in mind.

Closer to our purposes, the Genesis narrative of the Semitic peoples says the very breath of God gives life to humanity. God’s breath is what gives us our soul. Here is a direct relationship to a greater scheme that can shed light on our purpose in life

Let’s try to be aware of our biases for a minute. Like me, you may have been taught to hold the rigid logical arguments of the Greeks in high regard. The Greek philosophers valued efforts of the human intellect alone over religious inspiration. As products of the (so-called) Enlightenment Era, we have come to share this bias.

Meanwhile, creation narratives are commonly taught as mythology. That is, invented stories meant to do some cultural or social function, like keeping people in line or teaching morals. We look less favorably on these narratives, presumably because we don’t know their origin and can’t explain them logically.

But imagine for a moment that God actually spoke to humans in dreams and visions. If you believe in a God, then surely he can communicate to us in any way he chooses. Are not the words of our all-powerful divine being worth more than the whirring of human minds?

This is the basis of creation narratives the world over: that God wants to reveal himself to us, within history. Do we dare open our souls to receive our Creator?

I think the greatest benefit (you might call it a grace) of accepting that God has been working throughout history is that we can conceive of ourselves as a gift. This is a great counterbalance to our modern conception of our own identity as belonging completely to us. How lonely and potentially meaningless if we randomly developed rational souls! Beyond the existential sadness, something in our rational souls tells us this is wrong. We are searching out a purpose — all of us — as if something is calling us, as if something planted that need for a purpose in us. There are too many signs within the experience of a single human life, much less an entire culture, pointing towards a greater end.

If we consider the creation narratives as containing divine truth, we discover this deep meaning we’ve been looking for. Let’s give it a shot.

In our fundamental Christian narrative, passed down faithfully for thousands and thousands of years, we hear, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.’” This has astounding implications. Not only do we have our incredible “rational soul” thanks to our benevolent God, we are also told that this embodied soul is the very image and likeness of God himself!

With Great Gifts Come Great Responsibilities

Now we approach a richer understanding of what it means to be human. We were made according to a template, and that template is pure perfection.

We are a soul, made to be like God.

But who is God? What does it mean to be made in his image?

This topic could fill many books, so let’s focus on just a few things from our Christian dogma.

• God is one.
• God is also a communion of three persons.
• God is perfect; the source of all goodness and beauty.
• God is love.

Each of these has implications for how we understand what it means to be human, made in his image:

God is one. This is the “greatest commandment” that Moses shares alongside the Ten Commandments: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one,” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Being one tells us that he is unique, and so we learn that we, too, are unique beings. At the same time, as we learn that he is three persons in one, this “oneness” tells us that he is a unity. Likewise, there is a common unity among humanity that we must uphold.

God is a communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God exists in constant loving communion within the three persons, and we, too, are made for communion with each other. Humans may seek out solitude, but we are genetically programmed to thrive in and crave society. Even on the basic family level, we need two to procreate and a full family to care for its members.

God is perfect. Our template is not flawed. No matter the biological challenges a person might have, every human being has a spiritual template that is perfect. Our souls yearn to return and unite with that perfection, and nothing short of that perfection will suffice. We are meant to be good and bring beauty to the world because they are a part of that pure source of perfection.

God is love. We have to resist the trap of triteness that hearing this phrase over and over can present. This love is not sappy and it has a depth that we cannot begin to understand. First of all, this love has no end. It does not get tired or turn into something lesser. The divine love is the relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit, constantly flowing, constantly generating life. The love of the Father is a long-term love that looks to our ultimate salvation, which means that we might need correction along the way. It is also a doting love, a protective love, a jealous love. The love of the Son is an adoring love, constantly showing off the greatness of the Father, happily dependent on his love, grace and will. The love of the Spirit is an infectious, rapacious love that transforms everything it touches. It is the love of miracles and wonder.

How do all of these aspects of love exist in and through us? Our lives are the proving grounds for getting to know the love of God, loving him back, and bringing this life-giving love into the world (in a mini act of creation) concretely. The world can and should be our playground for love, where we transform the ugly, dirty sand into beautiful sand castles. We don’t do this because the sandcastles are amazing in themselves, worthy of being saved for eternity and full of inherent dignity, but simply because God wants us to do this and we want to do his will. The real treasure is not what we affect here on earth, but the love and divine energies with which we engage the world.

This, then, should be our understanding of what it means to be human: we are souls made in the image of the Perfect One who desires us and gives us himself so that we can know his love and allow it to flow through us as we make our way back to him.

Every one of us is this. Not just the ones who go to church or the ones who do good deeds. This is what we must see if we are to love all the other souls on this earth and be in communion with them. We must desire their good, just like the Father desires the Son’s good. We must work to lift them up and help them get to heaven. Hopefully, they will do the same for us.

Finding your Identity as Well as Your Purpose

Of course, the world is full of injustice and suffering. This is not a reflection on who God is or the fundamental goodness of souls. The issue here is personal freedom. God created us in his image, and he is fundamentally sovereign — that is, free to make choices, inhibited by nothing. According to this template, our souls have this same freedom of choice, only not to the same extent. We don’t have the power to create universes, for example. What we do have in our power is to choose God as our guiding light or choose something else.

Our Genesis narrative explains the consequence of choosing something other than God. The lesson and the template are important here, not the specifics, per se. Adam and Eve’s great sin of mistrusting God results in their banishment from perfect union with him, and the resultant fallen world that we inhabit. What’s more, every time we choose to act in self-interest or sin against God or one another, we repeat this sin of Adam and Eve. The results are never good for our souls. There is a great truth in this story.

We have a shared human tendency to sin and choose ourselves or temptations over God and his law. But this is not a shared human identity. It’s simply a shared way of acting. This is a big distinction. Let’s talk about identity for a moment.

Culturally, we have greatly confused our identity with the choices we make. Not long ago, my “identity” might be defined by the sports teams I like, the music I listen to, and how I dress. Increasingly, it means your stance on political issues and even your decisions to accept or reject your own biology (e.g., gender, sexual preference, etc.). And while choices in life are an enactment of our soul’s individuality, they do not define who we are. Our core identity was given to us. Our core identity comes from and belongs to God, to whom we owe everything.

We may think we “re-make” ourselves when we change where we live, how we look, or how we act. But all of these things are just momentary trifles. The most mind-boggling truth about who we are is that we are immortal souls, not simply bound to our time on this earth. All this identity obsessing is like spending your life in the changing room of a clothing store, looking at yourself in the mirror. Real life exists outside the clothing store. And real life doesn’t actually care what you are wearing.

So what is real life? What is our purpose? God explained it to us by becoming a man himself in order to teach us.

Jesus answers in this way: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment,” (Matthew 22:37-38).

To love God with our entire being is a lifelong endeavor. It is the greatest endeavor. To love him with our heart means that we align our will with his, that we make choices according to what he wants us to do. To love with all our soul means that we attempt to know him as intimately as we can, like a bride yearning for her husband, thirsty for the time when we will never be separated. To love with all our mind means to continually bring our minds back to him, to pray constantly, to not be distracted by the world.

But there is more, because God is always outward-facing, loving the other, and generous. So Jesus adds, “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” (Matthew 22:39-40).

To be made in the image of God means that we have been given souls like his, souls made for communion with others, souls meant to love. By loving him first and always, we learn to love others. It doesn’t work the other way around. Some may find their way to God by doing good works, but this is not the way that God has identified for us, and once they find God, they realize that there is something greater. There in God, they find the well from which all life and love springs.

This is our first step in realizing our purpose in life. This is also our goal. Not enough people say it: your life’s purpose resides in your soul’s union with God, nothing more and nothing less. So many of us occupy ourselves with other pursuits and other distractions. Do not be fooled by the ways of the world.

But What About Being Unique?

It’s important to differentiate between a purpose in life, a core identity, and a vocation. All humans can share the first two, but each of us lives a unique life thanks to the vocations we choose and the personality we infuse in our choices and actions.

Every person inherits different genes, develops differently, has natural and learned inclinations that determine their choices and responds to God’s call differently. Countless studies of twins show how different their lives can become, even sharing so much of the same genetic makeup and upbringing. The soul is a unique thing, made in God’s image.

So, it’s impossible for us NOT to be unique. That shouldn’t be an anxiety for us.

The real drama of our lives is recognizing the gift of an immortal soul we’ve been given and being faithful to our Creator’s vision for our lives. We are too easily pulled into the delights and sufferings of the world. God wants us to enjoy, to mourn, to feel, but to do so in a way that puts love, truth, goodness and beauty first. Learning to do this is learning to live a life well.

Next, we will explore how God helps us achieve our purpose by giving himself to us always and forever. See How to Live a Good Life Part II ->