There is a global crisis. The feverish pursuit of success brings more frustration than happiness. Where can we find a solution?

 

Newsroom (09/01/2025 18:17, Gaudium Press) It is impossible to close our eyes to the growing global crisis. Everywhere we look we face financial, social, political, and military crises… However, as Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira demonstrates in his work Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the greatest of all contemporary crises is that of man.

Contrary to appearances, the problem is not a recent one. Rather, it has existed since the sin of Adam and Eve. Under the pretense of being “like gods” (Gen 3:5), they turned away from the Creator by listening to the Serpent and eating the forbidden fruit, the root of original sin and, consequently, all sins.

From then on, humanity went through various crises. Among them is the failure of the Tower of Babel, which scattered its inhabitants and confused people’s language. This building was a symbol of human pride in reaching the heavens without divine help.

The advent of the Messiah was to be the solution to all crises. The Redeemer would not come, however, to fulfill the nationalistic desires of the Pharisees, in other words, to make “gods” of themselves and raise them as a “tower” over the Gentiles. On the contrary, the Anointed One would become incarnate above all to rescue humanity from that original abyss. He would empty himself to be “pierced for our transgressions” (Is 53:5) and thus heal our infirmities.

His Most Precious Blood would have sufficed for the Redemption, however the Savior wanted human collaboration, as St. Paul announced: “I complete in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s Passion for his Body, which is the Church” (Col 1:24). This “completion” takes place above all through the acts of the interior life: atonement, meditation and, in particular, prayer, that is, the elevation of the soul to God.

In this sense, if Adam and Eve had turned to God during the temptation, they would not have sinned. The same could be said of the builders of the ungodly Babel, the Pharisees, and Judas, who was called to be a pillar of the early Church.

Over the centuries, the various revolutions have aggravated the original catastrophe by progressively distancing themselves from the Creator. There were successive movements of growing secularism, secularism, anti-clericalism, atheism, etc., which evoked the solution to every crisis in man himself or in merely earthly activities.

As the examples of the past teach us, the solution to today’s crisis does not lie in seeking “fruit” in pleasures, as the hedonists advocate. Nor does it lie in changing the language, in a Babel-like manner, to please everyone and thus bring apparent peace. Much less is it trusting in a “stock exchange”, as Judas intended when he betrayed the Savior – and his vocation – for thirty coins.

The devil continues to reinvent himself today, promising false solutions or easy methods of overcoming humanity’s crisis – for example, through so-called “self-help”. In reality, mortals need help from on high, from the Most High. Only then will they be able to overcome the crisis in this image of God that is the man? In short, there will only be a solution when we raise our prayers to the Lord and he inclines his “heaven” and descends upon us (cf. Ps 143:5).

Text taken from Heralds of the Gospel Magazine no. 277, January 2025. Editorial.

Compiled by Dominic Joseph