The Christian Individual

I thought that I would simply share a couple of quotes from "Introduction to Christianity" by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) regarding the individual and the whole in respect to Christianity.

"Being a Christian means essentially changing over from being for oneself to being for one another."

"Christian faith is not based on the atomized individual but comes from the knowledge that there is no such thing as the mere individual, that, on the contrary, man is himself  only when he is fitted into the whole: into  mankind, into history, into the cosmos..."

"The depths we call hell man can only give to himself. Indeed, we must put it more pointedly: Hell consists in man's being unwilling to receive anything, in his desire to be self-sufficient. It is the expression of enclosure in one's own being alone."

"Hell is wanted only to be oneself; what happens when man barricades himself up in himself."

My thoughts: Just as Christ died for all, Christ lived, and does live, for all as well. If we are united to Christ through his Body, Church and Sacrament, then we too live and die for all. This is an essential characteristic of the saints, of those who imitate Christ: they are selfless. This ties directly into many aspects of our lives, in politics we seek the common good, not the individual good. In spirituality, we are united to the Church militant and the Church triumphant, in praying for the coming of God's kingdom in our lives. By wanting to be alone, to be that rugged individual, that independent monad, we miss the point: happiness, the fulfillment of life, comes from others.

As Timothy Radcliffe points out, the greatest sorrow, the most troubling pain that we as humans can experience is radical solitude. Prisoners in isolation are devastated. Infants and children that are neglected suffer for the rest of their lives. Being alone is a psychological, physical, and spiritual sickness that distorts the image and dignity of a human. If happiness comes from others, and sickness comes from isolation, why do we seek to become these radical individuals? Why do we try to cut ourselves off, when what we really seek is to be with, to be for another?

Christianity, because it joins men and women together to be for and with one another, is a dangerous idea in the world today, since the world wants to separate, to distinguish, to set up the individual as the one who can determine his or her own good, her own "truth".  Jesus is the Truth since he is the "infinite self-expenditure of God". (Ratzinger)  Jesus lives with and for the Other, so truth is to be found in living, like Jesus, with and for others. We cannot make ourselves our own authority for defining truth, just as we cannot be happy living only for ourselves.