Getting to the heart of "Who am I?" involves getting beyond the design of the material universe. We're in a different realm when we look at the material creation and see intricate elements of design. Now we're in the realm of persons, you and me, funky composites of mud and spirit — part atom and part angel, in a certain sense. That's us! Pope John Paul II said we're "a unique composite — a unity of spirit and matter, soul and body, fashioned in the image of God and destined to live forever."
In our quest to really know the world and ourselves, we must ponder the mystery of the person. If we don't ascend from the material to the personal, then we've got only half the story. What allows us to even know this truth in the first place is our spirit, our invisible and indivisible soul, empowered with gifts a quantum leap above the rest of the natural world we're born into.
This accounts for the lack of inquisitive, hoofed mammals in the Borders bookstore, and chickens reading poetry in coffee shops. Animals are not interested in a deeper meaning to life. They feel quite at home here, because here is their home. But it's not the end for us, ultimately — at least not now and not until the "new heavens and new earth" come to be.
A seeming digression — stay with me.
I just had the tune from the Greatest American Hero pop into my head…. "Believe it or not I'm walking on air, never thought I could feel so freeheeeeheeee! Flying away on a wing and a prayer…. who could it beeeeeee?…. Believe it or not it's just meeeeeeee."
Believe it or not, that was relevant. Our freedom is one of our greatest gifts. So to the question "Who am I?" comes part of the answer: I am free.
Of all the creatures in the universe, it is we alone who are truly free. All else is determined by physics or instinct and although we humans are most certainly instinctual, we always have the power of our will to rise above those instincts. We can give up our lives for loved ones, and even total strangers. We can will to love, sacrifice, and serve, even when our feelings say "yuck" or "heck, no!" We can be heroes!
We can engage in choices that dramatically alter the course of our lives and the lives of others. We are self-aware, self-reflective. We can choose between good and evil. Precisely because our choices make a difference, our lives have meaning.
So…. Who am I?
1. A rational animal, categorically higher that anything else that lives and moves and has its being here below, maker of poetry and prayer, with the power to ponder.
2. A free agent, with one foot on earth and one foot in eternity; mastermind with the power to dominate, manipulate and pontificate over this world (in the good sense of each of those words). What a task.
3. A created being…. and this is the key to a peaceful and grounded and realistic self-knowledge. It's the key to understanding "Who am I?" for on this depends my being intelligible to myself.
Gaudium et Spes (a spiritual karate chop of a document from Vatican II) said it so well, "For without the Creator the creature would disappear…. When God is forgotten, however, the creature itself grows unintelligible."
