THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON
The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God. It is fulfilled in his vocation to divine beatitude.
Endowed with intellect and free will, the human person is from his very conception ordered to God and destined for eternal beatitude.
Man's natural desire for happiness is of divine origin. God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One (God) who alone can fulfill it.
God calls man to his own beatitude. This vocation is addressed to each individual personally.
God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve Him in our neighbor, and so to become "partakers of the divine nature" and of eternal life.
True happiness is not found in riches or well-being, in human fame or power or in any human achievement, but in God alone. God alone is the source of true happiness.
God created man a rational being, coffering on him dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions.
Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.
As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to his ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. The choice to do what is evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to the slavery of sin.
The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just.
By choosing what is evil, ma turns his back to God. It is a self-destructive choice.
"STAND FAST, AND DO NOT BE CAUGHT AGAIN UNDER THE YOKE OF SLAVERY" (Galatians, 5, 1)
Fr. Cipriano Bontacchio