Man, oh ,man!

God created man unto His image and likeness…! On the seventh day, God rested…. Or did he really? As history reveals, it seemed that God never got His much-deserved sabbatical because man always had the knack of getting into trouble with God, himself, his fellowmen and the rest of creation. It would have been simpler if man had just accepted the truth about God and himself and shelved Project Babel in some remote shelf of history. But this wasn’t the case.
Moreover, the piece of apple stuck in Adam’s throat constantly to prodded him to ‘desire to become god, but without God.’ This mysterious longing for a disordered independence from God has constantly led man along a solitary barren path and eventually converting his earthly paradise into a wasteland slouching each day more towards Gomorrah. In this way, man has chosen the most deprave form of idolatry in trusting only in himself.
In his recent Encyclical, Luman Fidei, Pope Francis warned: “In place of faith in God, it seems better to worship an idol, into whose face we can look directly and whose origin we know, because it is the work of our own hands. Before an idol, there is no risk that we will be called to abandon our security, for idols have mouths, but they cannot speak (Ps 115:5). Idols exist, we begin to see, as a pretext for setting ourselves at the centre of reality and worshiping the work of our own hands. Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into the multiplicity of his desires; in refusing to await the time of promise, his life-story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants. (…) Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth. (no. 13)”
Once man chooses to journey through this egoistic desert without any clear direction or goal, he begins to justify his condition and will refuse to face the truth that God unceasingly and lovingly reveals to him. He will ‘create’ rationalizations and justifications for his choices, but without wanting to examine them under the gentle light of God’s Fatherly revelation and the gift of faith. Rather than face the light of faith, man chooses to turn his back on God and dwell in the obscurity of his own frail shadow.
The Holy Father further revealed this solitary attitude of man as his fear to face the truth about God and himself: “The light of love proper to faith can illumine the questions of our own time about truth. Truth nowadays is often reduced to the subjective authenticity of the individual, valid only for the life of the individual. A common truth intimidates us, for we identify it with the intransigent demands of totalitarian systems. (no.34)”
Man’s unwillingness to embrace the truth leads him to interiorly re-construct Babel. He builds structure with the idea of redefining man far from and opposed to the original true and good divine designs meant to authentically guide him towards perfection and happiness. Instead, man strives to engage himself in a futile frenzy –which cannot but reveal his interior rebellion ever since Babel’s failure– to undo every existential thread of the original creative template of man by God.
Thus, we witness the countless and vicious attempts to demean and degrade the sacredness of life from conception, the downplaying of the complementary sexual differences of man and woman, the bond of marriage threatened and annulled by divorce, the beauty and fruitfulness of married love deformed into lust, the nature of work and other material realities converted into selfish ends, etc.
The Encyclical says that the ‘upgrading of deviancy’ in man and society are principally rooted in his lack of openness and rejection of the truth. “Truth nowadays is often reduced to the subjective authenticity of the individual, valid only for the life of the individual. A common truth intimidates us, for we identify it with the intransigent demands of totalitarian systems. (no. 34)”
The Pope admonishes us: “When faith is weakened, the foundations of humanity also risk being weakened, as the poet T.S. Eliot warned: Do you need to be told that even those modest attainments / As you can boast in the way of polite society / Will hardly survive the Faith to which they owe their significance? If we remove faith in God from our cities, mutual trust would be weakened, we would remain united only by fear and our stability would be threatened. (no. 55)”
It is time for every man and woman to face sincerely and courageously the truth that the light of faith reveals. And Pope Francis invites the world to this inspiring and healing light because it eventually guides man to the ultimate Love of his existence:
“The light of love proper to faith can illumine the questions of our own time about truth. (…) But if truth is a truth of love, if it is a truth disclosed in personal encounter with the Other and with others, then it can be set free from its enclosure in individuals and become part of the common good. As a truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a truth that stifles the individual. Since it is born of love, it can penetrate to the heart, to the personal core of each man and woman. (no. 34)”