What is the Life of Man?

Almost all of us search for what life is all about. What is its meaning? What is my meaning? Sadly, most of us define it by our own terms, or worst, by what the media and society dictate to us.

Man made definitions of the meaning of life will always be faulty. Why? Because man did not create himself. We are not the designer of our lives. We did not come to existence because we decided to, Someone else decided we should exist. Only that Someone can reveal to us what life is all about.

That Someone is “The” One. God.

Only in God can we find what life is all about because He is Life itself.

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” – John 14:6

To find meaning outside God is to live a life prone to error and pain. Our human efforts will always fall short for we do not know who we really are. We do not know our fulfillment. And most of all, we cannot reach the fulfillment of our humanity by our own effort (that is why the New Age movement is a heresy.) Only God’s grace can do that.

Only God through Jesus can we truly live. Only in Jesus can we find life’s meaning. For Jesus is God’s revelation made flesh. In Jesus, God did not only reveal Himself to us, but revealed ourselves to us.

And what did Jesus revealed?

We were created to know and love God. And we cannot find life’s meaning outside of it.

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life. – (#1 of Catechism of the Catholic Church)