Building a Civilization of Love
Leading up to the year 2000, Pope John Paul II dedicated his Wednesday audiences to each member of the Trinity. Over the course of three years, the pontiff began in 1997 by speaking on Jesus Christ and in 1998 turned his focus onto the Holy Spirit. During the final year, John Paul II emphasized the Revelation, the qualities, and how we interact with the love of God the Father. The topics and total length of these audiences are too long to cover in just one of our Wednesday knowHis.love articles, but I hope to dive into these teachings from time to time as a way of better understanding and living out our baptismal identity - that is, being a beloved child of God the Father.
On December 15, 1999, John Paul II gave us his final teaching on God the Father. I thought that it may be helpful to start here in order to know our overall trajectory when visiting this series. If we know our destination, the journey can begin to make more sense. In this case, we are called to build and live in a civilization of love.
First, John Paul explains, we must recognize that our discipleship, the act of following Jesus, is meant to be noticeable to those around us. Being a Christian is not simply an internal affair, but is, in fact, meant to reveal itself to the world through our acts of love. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another' (Jn 13: 35). The love that we share for one another is meant to be a clear indicator that we follow Jesus. We are meant to live differently than what is offered by worldly civilizations and in our situation today that means that we chose to love rather than give into the bitterness, cynicism, lies, knee-jerk emotional reactions, and judgments that so often define how we ourselves or those around us interact with one another. Instead, John Paul II sees this descriptor of disciples as an invitation to face the “fascinating challenge of building a world enlivened by the law of love, a civilization of love, ‘founded on the universal values of peace, solidarity, justice and liberty, which find their full attainment in Christ’”(Tertio millennio adveniente, n. 52).
In order to face this challenge of building a civilization of love, it is necessary to recognize the sovereignty of God the Father, “the inexhaustible source of love.” Many modern civilizations, however, have suffered due to political or other cultural influences, a loss in a reference point to this source of love. Religious indifferentism brought on by the overwhelming wave of secularism has left so many lost to the turbulent waters of chasing after one quasi-religious fad after another. John Paul II notes, “The return to a confused religiosity, caused by fragile compensatory needs and the search for a psycho-cosmic balance, which appears in many of the new religious paradigms that proclaim a religiosity without reference to a transcendent and personal God, is certainly not a valid response to this situation.” While this is certainly true for those who reject any affiliation with religion, I believe we also are seeing a rise in this “confused religiosity” within the Church as well. The endless stream of clergy scandals has wounded many and left them believing that if Church leadership is so unreliable that I must somehow become the sole measure of what is true. This unfortunate consequence has individualized the faith to the point that some only listen to certain bishops or priests that already confirm their bias while others give into New Age hyper-individualistic beliefs that tout “deconstruction” as the highest good. These extremes do nothing to build a civilization of love as both are fundamentally rooted in a distrust of the other, promoting a suicidal and disordered self-love that is incapable of truly fulfilling the command to love God, self, and neighbor.
John Paul II wants us to see the underlying nihilism that walks hand in hand with the society’s loss of a sense of God. Without grounding our reality in the source of love, soon we see how little everything, including our own lives, really matter. How many times have we seen the insult, “kill yourself!” thrown at others online? How easy is it to believe that my life is only valuable if I can work, if I can contribute to society, or if I am free from suffering. If we lose our sense of God and our ability to be in relationship with Him, no wonder everything feels meaningless! Living without reference to the source of our being leads us to rehearse day after day what Hell must feel like. If our own lives don’t matter, then it is only a matter of time before we find more and more ways to limit the meaning of the lives of those around us. If someone is an inconvenience due to their age, health, or role in society - destroy them. John Paul II explains, “It is paradoxically demanded that the State recognize as ‘rights’ many forms of conduct which threaten human life, especially the weakest and the most defenceless, not to mention the enormous difficulties in accepting others because they are different, inconvenient, foreign, sick or disabled.” The culture in many of our wealthy nations is “death-loving:” ugly voices bellowing out cries of violence against the weak and defenceless, all the while making the lives of those that are different, inconvenient, foreign, sick, or disable a living hell as they are ostracized from participating fully in society.
This is not a culture of love. This is antithetical to building up a civilization of love.
As we recognize the loss of a sense of God and the nihilism that accompanies it, how ought we go about building a world rooted in love?
The answer really is found in the Gospels and our capacity to share this Good News. John Paul II recognizes the need to share the love expressed in the Gospels in order to rehabilitate cultures and move them from “death loving” to life giving. To be clear, the pope does not see the Gospel as being consistent with any one culture. Quoting Paul VI, we hear, "The Gospel, and therefore evangelization, are certainly not identical with culture, and they are independent in regard to all cultures" (Evangelii nuntiandi, n. 20). John Paul II notes, however, that while the Gospel is independent in regard to all cultures, as it “purifies and uplifts what is human, making the beauty of life, the harmony of peaceful coexistence and the originality that every people contributes to the human community shine resplendently.” Even in cultures that are completely indifferent to the Gospel, we can find seeds of Truth that can point each person back to the source of love. As Christians share the Gospel, we avoid destroying the particular features of a culture and instead elevate what is Good, True, and Beautiful.
Instead of narrowing our field of view and reducing the Gospel to the needs of a certain political party or cultural movement, we ought find ways to see what is good in their actions and cultural standards and gently direct each person towards the source of all they desire. For example, if we are guided by a sense of justice without knowing the Just Judge, we can easily move from one cause to another without understanding the underlying dignity of the human person. We can shout “justice!,” idolizing a concept of fairness to the point that we are motivated by inconvenience rather than a love of neighbor rooted in relationship with God. In proclaiming the Gospel, we are called to help those unmoored from the harbor of reality connect the justice they seek for others with the inherent dignity of each human person as created in the image and likeness of God. As John Paul II says, “The cornerstone of the civilization of love is recognition of the value of the human person and, concretely, of all human beings.” Finding ways to bridge these connections leaves us more, not less, human.
Finally, John Paul explains that teaching on the dignity of the human person will remain a “dead letter” if we do not couple it with authentic religious experience. The Church does not exist to offer platitudes or ideals to the world and speak as if God does not exist. Everything that the Church teaches, proclaims, and acts on is rooted in knowledge of a personal relationship with the living God. If Christians somehow reduce the Gospel to a set of ideas rather than a lived relationship, we are no longer proclaiming the Gospel, but a counterfeit message that will lead to nothing but destruction. Making known the Gospel within the context of a lived relationship with God, however, can lead those living in a secular culture towards an authentic religious experience that can radically transform how a person sees God, themselves, others, and the world around them. This contribution, John Paul II notes, is mainly shared through the witness of lay people as they interact with the world in their daily lives. As men and women go to their jobs, spend time in the classroom, or even relax at home with their families, they are called to be a witness to the civilization of love. Doctorates in theology are not required to build this society, only a desire to know, seek, and love God as we communicate how much we are loved by Him. The more firmly we root our lives in our relationship with our Father in Heaven, the easier it becomes to recognize the dignity of those around us, living out our call of discipleship as we build a civilization of love.