It’s not easy being human, but here is great explanation.

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 26, 2026 | In Reviews

I suppose everybody is vaguely familiar with Kermit the Frog’s song from the television program “Sesame Street”: It’s not Easy Bein’ Green. Perhaps ever since the song’s debut in 1970, Americans have occasionally turned the signature line of the song into a personal lament, responding to minor criticisms and disappointments by remarking that it’s not easy being green. Indeed, this might now be taken as a jocular expression of the thought that it’s not easy being human, or it’s not easy being me.

If this is so (and I believe it is) then we are fortunate to have a new book by John S. Grabowski entitled Being Human (or, more completely, A Catholic Guide to Being Human). At just over 150 pages of text, the book is brief, easy to read…and profound. What most distinguishes Being Human is Grabowski’s unerring selection and explanation of the fundamental truths about our human nature as understood by Christ and the Catholic Church. I don’t think I have ever seen a Catholic anthropology which is at once so readable, so concise, and so deeply rooted in our essential nature as created by the God who loved us unto being.

Potential readers should not be looking here for an intellectually abstruse disquisition on human nature, such as we might find in an dense philosophy text or even, for that matter, in an academic theology text. What we find rather is an extraordinarily accessible account of what it means to be human in terms of how God made us and what God made us for, and how we fit into His plan for our happiness simply by living in accordance with our natural and supernatural design. This is appropriate, of course, in a “Catholic guide”, since what we really want to know is how best to live in accordance with our own created reality—that is, in accordance with who we really are—which necessarily includes the question of what we are for.

What it covers

Unlike Caesar’s Gaul, Being Human is divided into nine parts (which I suppose may be considered three squared). The first chapter examines what we might call our “what-ness” and our “who-ness”, the second explores our personhood in the image of God, and the third is a primer on how to read Scripture within the Church in order to come away with a correct understanding. For, as chapter 3 concludes, we must realize we were created to be both stewards and priests.

Chapters four through six explore our captivity by sin, the spiritual combat that animates both our lives and all of Scripture, and our redemption in Christ, by which we are reborn in the Holy Spirit through streams of living water. And the final three chapters explore our redeemed nature, the distortions and deceptions which seek to corrupt that nature, and our destiny in the four last things. (There are also brief discussions of that penultimate thing, purgatory, and the habitually confusing topic of “limbo”.)

But what is most remarkable about this extraordinarily readable book is the simplicity and clarity with which the author explains the ultimate realities which the dubious light of modernity seems to render so unnecessarily incomprehensible, remote, and even silly. One of the greatest compliments I can pay to John Grabowski is that he makes our Catholic understanding of reality so remarkably clear and obvious that we really do begin to see that it is only our temptations that obscure it.

Examples

Again and again Grabowski states great truths with delightful simplicity. For example, in chapter 7 he writes:

The Fall ruptured the unity between the body and the person. Now, our bodily drives are disordered…. The good news, however, is that the body is included in our redemption…. Our bodies can once again serve as visible expressions of our commitments to God and to other people, enabling us to relate to others in love. Saint Paul calls the body of a baptized Christian “a temple of the holy spirit”. [pp. 105-6]

And in chapter 5, he cites St. Athanasius of Alexandria to remind us of

the necessity of Jesus being both fully God and fully man to bring about our salvation…. [O]ne of the effects of the Fall was unleashing death and corruption within humanity…. Christ, in assuming our nature in the Incarnation, “redrew” human nature in the image of God…. But there was another reason he had to be human—so that he could die for us. [pp.81-2]

To reproduce all the passages in Being Human that so easily clarify a genuinely Catholic understanding of reality I would have to reproduce the entire book.

Conclusion

Being Human is must reading for anyone who could benefit from either a clear and engaging account of who we are, what we are destined for, and how we are to get there, or a refresher course in what it means, overall, to be a Christian. Complete with engaging introductory references to everything from How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Princess Bride to J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, not to mention Scripture (and even Johnny Cash), Grabowski draws the reader into each of his topics with masterful ease, and then sends the reader forth again with a better understanding of (or at least a very engaging refresher in) what it really means to be a man, woman or child—at this or any other confusing time in history.

The point is not that John Grabowski breaks new ground. The point is that he goes over the old ground so clearly and even eloquently that he leaves the reader with not only a deepened but a more joyful understanding of what it means to be a Catholic. For the reader, receiving this message is absolutely effortless. While there are many worthwhile expositions and even studies of the Christian message down through history, this one, for today’s market, is ideally suited not only to inquirers and new converts but to the habitual Catholic who simply wants to go over it again—to remind himself of why the Christian message not only speaks profoundly to mind and heart, but actually glows with a Divine light.

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John S. Grabowski, A Catholic Guide to Being Human: Our Sunday Visitor. 2026. 176 pp. Paper.