Man's dignity consists of being fundamentally a debtor and an heir.

Man's dignity consists of being fundamentally a debtor and an heir. How beautiful and freeing it is to know that I exist because I have been loved! I am the product of a free decision by God, who, from all eternity, willed my existence. How sweet it is to know that one is the heir of a human lineage in which children are born as the most beautiful fruit of their parents' love. How productive it is to know that one is indebted to a history, to a country, to a civilization. I do not think that it is necessary to be born an orphan in order to be fully free. our freedom has meaning only if other persons give substance to it for us, gratuitously and through their love. What would we be if our parents did not teach us to walk and talk? To inherit is the condition for any true freedom.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, The Day is Now Far Spent