HOOKSET, NH (Catholic Online) - This is a repeat worth reflecting upon again. Some time ago, on a visit to the United States, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta spoke of the glutted bellies and emaciated hearts of the people living in the United States: "In the Third World, there is often a famine of the stomach due to the lack of food, but the people are rich in love. They share what little they have with one another. In developed nations like yours (America) there is an abundance of food. But there is often a famine of the heart due to a lack of love. The victims of this famine of love are the new poor. And who are these poor people? They are the people sitting next to you."

Blessed Pope John Paul II gave the reason why it is no minor matter whether a person is loved or not loved: "Man cannot live without love. He remains a being incomprehensible to himself. His life is senseless if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it"

There is, then, an integral connection between a love-being and his or her becoming loved or loveable: "Love, then, seems to be both a state of being and [a condition] of becoming. In fact, love poems and love songs continue to attest always to the inner urge of the human heart for a love that lasts, longing for an everlasting love, a hunger for eternal love. Love is . . . a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed, inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and, thus, towards authentic self-discovery and, indeed, the discovery of God" (Pope Benedict XVI)

In 1965, the Fathers of Vatican Council II addressed the lamentable condition of the closed, loveless, inward-looking self: "Many, it is true, fail to see the dramatic nature of this state of affairs in all its clarity for their vision is in fact blurred by materialism, or they are prevented from even thinking about it by the wretchedness of their plight. Others delude themselves that they have found peace in a world-view now fashionable.

There are still others whose hopes are set on a genuine and total emancipation of humankind through human effort alone and look forward to some future earthly paradise where all the desires of their hearts will be fulfilled.

Nor is it unusual to find people who, having lost faith in life, extol the kind of foolhardiness which would empty life of all significance in itself and invest it with a meaning of their own devising.

Nonetheless, in the face of modem developments there is a growing body of people who are asking the most fundamental of all questions or are raising them with greater clarity: What is humanity? What is the meaning of suffering, evil, death, which have not been eliminated by all this progress? What is the purpose of these achievements, purchased at so high a price? What can people contribute to society? What can they expect from it? What happens after this earthly life is ended?" (Pastoral Constitution on the Church, no. 10).

As mentioned, CONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL EXISTENCE emerges from a COMPOSITE WHOLE BEING comprised of BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT. Human nature, then, is a spirit-filled organic entity. This is true because human beings are an image of God: "Man is the summit of the Creator's work, as the inspired account [in the Book of Genesis] expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other creatures: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Man occupies a unique place in creation: (1) he is "in the image of God"; (2) in his own nature he unites the spiritual and material worlds; (3) he is created "male and female"; (4) God established him in his friendship" (Catechism, no. 343).

Reality? This is reality! The Catholic Church expounds on this truth of human existence:  "Of all visible creatures only man is "able to know and love his Creator." He is "the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake," and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity" (Catechism, no. 356).

Thus, the Catholic Church emphasizes the integral unity of human nature: The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality. It affirms that "then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." Man, WHOLE AND ENTIRE, is therefore willed by God"     (Catechism, no. 362).

Again, the Catholic Church stresses that HUMAN NATURE is CONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL EXISTENCE: :In sacred scripture, the term "soul" often refers to human life or the entire human person. But "soul" also refers to ...