Uniqueness

Everyone is a unique personality.  Everyone is a unique image made by God:  one that only that person and no one else is and has.  Thomas Aquinas says that each and every one of us is a unique expression of God in this world.  The world would be poorer if every single one of us were not here to express God in his or her special way.  In his autobiography, Roman Guardini tells us that in the first place God is something fundamental about each human being -- pronounces a special set of words over him or her, as it were -- that applies to that person and to no one else.  Every human being is a word of God become flesh.  And our task is to make this unique something God has said perceptible and effective in life, to make sure it is heard as the extraordinary pronouncement it is.

Self-respect means knowing your own value.  It means discovering the unique image of God that I am, and the special pronouncement that God makes in me alone.  That won't necessarily make me superficially sure of myself, streetwise, and able to complete a deal with an up-to-date closing technique, but it will mean that I am on the way to discovering and understanding the mystery of my own existence.  I shall be able to stop comparing myself with others and trying to stress my strong points.  My uniquesness is independent of all the virtues I might lay claim to.  It means that I was shaped by God.  The Psalmist described this experience in these words:  "For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Ps. 139:13f).

From Building Self-Esteem, The Christian Dimension

by Anselm Gruen, OSB