And the signs are everywhere.
‘G et married. Have children. Build a legacy. Pass down your values. Pursue the eternal. Seek true joy.”
The Heritage Foundation has this on a banner on the side of its headquarters on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. Many people nowadays might think that to encourage men and women to marry — and to marry while young — is backward, but to many others it sounds like hope.
Popes traditionally give a catechetical teaching on Wednesdays outside Saint Peter’s Basilica and, when the weather is right, in the square. Most recently, these messages have been all about hope. During the first week of October, Pope Leo said this to those gathered: “Brothers and sisters, Christ’s resurrection teaches us that no history is so marked by disappointment or sin that it cannot be visited by hope. No fall is definitive, no night is eternal, no wound is destined to remain open forever. However distant, lost or unworthy we may feel, there is no distance that can extinguish the unfailing power of God’s love.”
No fall is definitive. How many of us have done something that we’ve regretted so much it has made us sick? Something that has made us want to become invisible, hit rewind, and forget it ever happened. But we can’t. Instead we are invited to believe that good can come from it. Our mistake, our sin, may teach us something. It may be contagious in its grace. Sometimes you may feel the need to plead with God for mercy, but He desires to give it to us even before we ask.
It is a common misconception that God only comes to the pious and those unscathed by sin. Such perfect souls wouldn’t need a Savior. They wouldn’t need the miracles that only God can make possible. Pope Leo emphasized that “the Risen One is close to us precisely in the darkest places: in our failures, in our frayed relationships, in the daily struggles that weigh on our shoulders, in the doubts that discourage us.” Indeed. “nothing that we are, no fragment of our existence, is foreign to him.” Even those things we think are hidden from Him are known. And He loves us still.
Leo, as every contemporary pope has at one time or another, makes clear that it is in the mundane and everyday that we can find God’s presence. God “walks alongside each of us” and “with infinite delicacy asks us to let him warm our hearts.” Moreover: “He does not impose himself loudly; he does not demand to be recognized immediately. He waits patiently for the moment when our eyes will open to see his friendly face, capable of transforming disappointment into hopeful expectation, sadness into gratitude, resignation into hope.” His patience beckons us to patience. His love makes us want to love — makes it possible to love.
The murder of Charlie Kirk last month highlighted several things. Among them is that the depth of loneliness and despair felt by many young people, especially young men, can lead them into the wretched arms of every kind of evil. Also: It’s not terribly hard to show young men and women that community — even if marriage and family are still far from their minds — can give them a sense of meaning and is already, whether they realize it or not, written on their hearts. Kirk understood that human needs are greater than anything a political party can offer. We long for something greater, because we were made for something greater. We are not meant to be alone, because that’s not how God made us. Every good thing can flow from there, through Him, and with Him, and in Him.
When I got into D.C. by Amtrak and asked my Uber driver to swing by Heritage, he knew exactly why. An Ethiopian immigrant, he lamented that Kirk had been killed because he had tried-and-true values in a culture that often wants to destroy them. Now is the time to rally for these values in every relationship in our lives.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.