Person: Reality

If the Word of God is the Second Person of the Trinity;

And if Jesus Christ is the enfleshed Second Person of the Trinity;

And if Jesus Christ is the prototype of the human person as spelled out in Gaudium et spes #22: “Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling;”

And if the Word of God is the ultimate reality as proclaimed by Benedict XVI on October 7, 2008: “the Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock. The one who builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The one who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is the one who builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent” …

Then, the human person is what we mean by “being” and “reality.” We are now beyond “things” and “substances” as reality. The experience of the “I” as self-transcending gift is what is real. As John Paul said in “Fides et Ratio” #83: “In a special way, the person constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being, and hence with metaphysical enquiry.” The new ontology begins here!!