Holistic Development and Life’s Purpose: A Christian Perspective
Comprehensive Education: Fostering Human Dignity
Inclusive education aims at the internal and multidimensional development of the person, fostering the ability to:
- Learn to know
- Know-how (practical application)
- Knowing how to be (personal conduct)
- Ultimately, knowing how to exist (holistic being)
Knowledge, practical skills, and the ability to be are conducive to true understanding; knowledge is a task of being. Knowing how to do is a humanizing process. Teaching enables individuals to solve specific problems and address their daily needs. Learning to know helps make sense of the complexity of reality and enables patient understanding.
To truly live means living the present moment with coherence, basic trust, simplicity, and love, understanding who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. This comprehensive education was exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth, through a slow process that began with his incarnation, faced a crisis in Jerusalem with his death, and reached completion on Easter morning with his resurrection.
We contribute to this educational task by denouncing situations that impede human dignity and by proclaiming that another global order is possible. Humans grow from the central experience of love. Christians can share this commitment with many other individuals and groups. We do this from the core of our life experience: a personal encounter with the Risen Christ.
Youth and the Meaning of Existence
The Church attaches particular importance to the period of youth as a key stage in every person’s life. Everyone looks to us, because in a sense, everyone can constantly renew their youth through us. Youth is an inherent asset of humanity itself. We, the youth, hold the future.
When we say that the future depends on us, we consider ethical categories such as the question of value and the meaning of life, which are part of the unique richness of youth. The fundamental question is: What must I do to make life worth living, to give it meaning?
Science, along with art, has discovered humanity’s possibilities over matter and has also managed to master the inner world of thought, capabilities, tendencies, and passions. However, it is clear that when we come to Christ, when He becomes the confidant for the questions of youth, we cannot pose a question different from that of the youth in the Gospel. Any other questions about the meaning and value of our life posed to Christ would be inadequate and miss the essential point.
The answer Jesus gives to his interlocutor in the Gospel is addressed to each of us young people. Christ questions us about the state of our moral sensibilities and, at the same time, about the state of our consciousness. This is a key question for humanity, the central question of our youth. Its value is most strictly linked to each person’s relationship with moral good and evil.
The value of this project depends crucially on the authenticity and righteousness of our consciousness, but also on sensitivity. Humans need to feel loved, eternally loved, and known to have been chosen from eternity. This eternal love, this divine election, accompanies humanity throughout life as the loving gaze of Christ, and with greater force during times of trial, humiliation, and questioning of self and the meaning of existence. It is the gaze of Christ that enables us to persevere.