The way, more than a direction to reach through our own strength or an ideal to attain, is a grace of salvation given to the condition of fallen humanity by an incarnate God.
Conscious or unconscious, we live in a reality governed by Love; the fullness of Existence has created to love and be loved. We share that vocation as His creatures. To respond to this vocation, the foundation of love is needed: authentic freedom, which allows for rejection, which became a reality with the angels and also with our first parents, and whose effects we have all suffered. Even after rejection, there is hope, because we do not cease to be loved, even if it is difficult for us to love in a righteous and selfless way.
Everything fulfills its purpose in the Creator's time. The Son fulfills when He opens the way for His brethren, because there is nothing the Father gives up for lost, and those who have rejected their relationship with the Creator can change their minds from a freedom redeemed by the Son. Guided by the Spirit, they discover the joy of the "yes" they had not known before the Son.
The origin: the God who is Love and who brings into existence
God does not create out of necessity, but out of love, and the tendency of true love is to diffuse itself.
That is why the "I Am"—the eternal Being, the one who is being—shares His Being.
Creation is not an accident or an experiment, but a free act in which God communicates existence to beings capable, in different degrees, of participating in His love.
Tradition distinguishes two fundamental ways of being created:
a) Creatures as vestiges of God
Everything created reflects something of its Creator: order, beauty, harmony, life.
They are "vestiges," traces that point to Him.
b) Creatures as images of God
But only some creatures are "image," that is, free in will, capable of knowing through intelligence, and capable of loving to enter into communion with God.
These creatures are:
- Angels: pure spirits, atemporal, unchanging. Their knowledge is clear, intuitive, without error; therefore, their decisions are full, definitive.
- Human beings: corporeal and spiritual creatures. Subject to time, to change, to progressive and experiential knowledge. They have been entrusted with creation as dominion, and in the original plan they were endowed with preternatural gifts: integrity (inner harmony), immortality, and infused science (a luminous knowledge proportionate to their mission). These gifts did not belong to human nature by right, but were free gifts that elevated it, allowing it to live in a perfect order, in communion with God, with itself, with others, and with creation.
Both—angels and humans—are called to be dwelling places of God, that is, to live in communion with Him through sanctifying grace: a supernatural gift that makes us partakers of the divine life and converts our soul into a temple of the living God.
The call: to love freely
As images of God, we have been created for love. But love is only love when it is free, and authentic freedom necessarily implies the possibility of rejection.
That is why both angels and human beings were placed before a real choice: to accept or reject communion with God.
The fall: when freedom rejects Love
a) The fall of the angels
The angels, being atemporal and possessing clear knowledge of God, made a single decision, immediate to their creation and definitive.
Those who chose to reject God were not exterminated—for that would invalidate freedom and God's own creative will—but were left in existence without grace, that is, without communion with God.
This state is what we call hell: not an imposed punishment, but the natural consequence of having turned away from the only Good capable of fulfilling their being; in other words, God does not force love under any circumstances, not even out of His immense mercy.
Their suffering is causal, not imposed: they clearly perceive what they have lost.
They do not feel pain for having offended God, but for not being able to enjoy Him. This generates remorse without repentance, leading to hatred: towards God, towards themselves, and towards everything He loves.
By going against their proper end—to be loved and to love, the only source of true happiness—their existence becomes an insatiable void. Their spiritual nature, made to rest in God, can no longer find rest: it remains trapped in an impossible search, a perpetual lack that becomes torment.
b) The fall of man
For human beings, the implications of rejection are different.
Being temporal, their knowledge of God is not full; if it were, their freedom would be conditioned. That is why the test of Adam and Eve was based on trust and obedience, through the temptation of the fallen angel—permitted by God.
By distrusting God and disobeying, sanctifying grace was lost, that is, communion with God was broken.
And from that rupture arose two effects:
1. Physical evil and disorder in creation
The cosmos, ontologically united to man as its guardian, experiences decadence: disease, death, pain, disharmony. That is, the preternatural gifts are lost.
2. Moral evil
The true freedom of the will, which always seeks the good, is lost and is inclined to sin, that is, concupiscence, where desires are disordered. A rupture of fundamental relationships is created: with God, oneself, one's neighbor, and creation.
This is what we call fallen humanity: not personal guilt transmitted by imitation, but an inherited condition, the loss of the sanctifying grace that Adam and Eve possessed.
Unlike angels, whose choice was unique and definitive, we are temporal beings: we change, we learn, we mature. Therefore, although we are born into a situation preceded by the decision of our first parents, our freedom is not closed; we can repent and turn back to God.
However, without redemption, this movement would be impossible:
What good would it do to desire to return to God if the way remained closed?
What good would it do to repent if there were no real possibility of reconciliation?
Humanity could recognize its wound, but it could not heal it. Only God could open the way back. That is why redemption is necessary.
Here begins the mystery.
The way: God becomes man to lift man up
This is the center of Christianity: the God who "is" becomes one of us so that we can become again what we were called to be.
The Incarnation of the Word is not a symbol, but an act of real rescue.
Christ assumes our fallen nature—except for sin—to heal it from within.
With His life, death, and resurrection, He restores sanctifying grace to us, justifies us with His merit, and reopens the way to eternal communion.
He does not automatically eliminate the consequences of sin—suffering, fragility, the inclination to evil—but He changes their meaning: they are no longer inevitable destruction, but places where grace can save.
Christ is not only a direction to be reached through self-effort—because even the pursuit of virtue reveals our fragility and need for God—but a presence that sustains us, restores us, and encourages us to rise again and again.
In Him, fallen humanity finds not only forgiveness, but a real way back:
the way to return to being with Being.