Writing this series of columns has called my attention to a prejudice I have that I don’t know how I acquired. The prejudice is against all so-called “self-help” books. I have never read one, and yet in my mind the very title “self-help” suggests a narrow narcissism. I hope that no reader of this series of columns on the meaning and mystery of human presence thinks I am promoting some kind of narcissism. I am hoping that tying human presence to God’s presence, as I have tried to do in this series, avoids all narcissism. Nor am I trying to promote some type of relativism. What I am trying to promote is an appreciation of the awesome power we have to influence our meaning, development, and maturity as persons. We can do that by the way we relate to each other.

I have come to believe that how we are present to other persons is one of the most important ways we grow or decline. We are always present to each other. How we are present can be extremely important.

Often when I start writing a series of columns on one topic, I have many ideas about what I want to include. This was not my experience in writing this series of columns on the meaning and mystery of human presence. In a sense, each column I wrote was like a new beginning. Though I wanted each column to build on previous columns, I found that I frequently had to review what I had written not only because I did not want to repeat myself but because I kept getting what I hoped were new insights into human presence. Underlying each column was the important insight that every person is radically relational.

Persons are relating all the time. There is never a moment when we are not relating. We cannot control whether we are relating. As human persons, we cannot stop relating. However, we can control where, when, and how we relate. In my own understanding of human presence, I place special emphasis on “how” we relate.

How we relate enormously influences who we become. God is relating to us at every moment of our lives. If God stopped relating to us, we would cease to exist. God’s way of relating to us is all gift. God’s love brings us into existence, and God’s love helps us to grow and develop as persons. If we have any images of God that minimize how much God loves, we should do everything we can to reject and banish those images. They convey serious errors. In his small book, which has the wonderful title “Altogether Gift,” Michael Downey wrote the following:

“Living freely with, in, and from the gift entails a deep recognition that all is gift, that the nature of sin lies in squandering the gift, and that responding to God’s gift calls for living as stewards of all creation, as guests in God’s household.

“In Christ, all is embraced. He was not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters (Hebrews 2: 11-13).

“Our life, every inch and ounce of it, every moment of it, is to be lived in the presence of the divine. In the tub and at the table. In our resting and our rising. In childbearing and child-rearing. In sickness. In listening. In learning. In stripping and in clothing. In primping and in perfuming. In traveling and in the delight of sexual intimacy. But especially in our brokenness and vulnerability. All these ordinary and quite mundane are paths to communion in the one Love. In artistic expression and in the sacramental life of the church we see more clearly the whole of the human reality as a precinct of epiphany, the geography of grace, the region of God’s coming as gift” (p. 97).

I love the expression “precinct of epiphany.” When we reflect on God’s everlasting and infinite love coming to us as a gift, the experience can be breathtaking. I don’t think I am exaggerating in using the word ‘‘breathtaking.”

No matter how much we emphasize God’s love for us, we don’t come close to adequately expressing the reality of God’s love. Trying to put into practice what I consider some insights I have offered in this series of columns, I am wondering how successful I have been in my own life.

The one area in my life in which I especially hope that my presence has been fruitful is in daily doing centering prayer.

The reason I choose prayer, as being influenced by the ideas presented in this series, is that there has been less distraction but, more importantly, a strong sense of God’s presence, at least occasionally.

Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.