Questions and answers
I recently turned 45, and with that attained number of years on this temporary home we call earth, a multitude of emotions, thoughts, questions, and realities have recently come to the forefront. After years of playing soccer, do my knees hurt when I get up from sitting for a long while? I can answer that with a resounding, “Yes!” Does time seem to fly by with my once toddlers now preparing to embark on their collegiate journeys? Again, I can answer, “Yes!” But there is much more, much deeper.
I recently turned 45, and with that attained number of years on this temporary home we call earth, a multitude of emotions, thoughts, questions, and realities have recently come to the forefront. After years of playing soccer, do my knees hurt when I get up from sitting for a long while? I can answer that with a resounding, “Yes!” Does time seem to fly by with my once toddlers now preparing to embark on their collegiate journeys? Again, I can answer, “Yes!” But there is much more, much deeper.
I suppose it is my “mid-life crisis,” but I have had weak moments of questioning life itself. Day in and day out, we trudge along sometimes enduring immense suffering, or, at the very least, hearing countless stories of the trials and tribulations of others. Add in virtually every child, teenager, and adult “glued” to their phone and the constant bombardment of artificial intelligence (AI), and it is easy to wonder why life even matters.
A macabre and hopeless thought to be sure. From such a vantage, the “crisis” moniker is definitely warranted, but as Christians, the hopelessness should be easily overcome.
It is overcome because Christ is our hope, and as this year’s Diocesan Appeal theme states, Christ is “the Way forward.” Fittingly, in this Year of St. Francis, Bishop Raica notes in his article for this issue that looking to St. Francis offers us all a road map to the “Way.” St. Francis’ simple lifestyle, explains the bishop, “Was understood as: ‘Let’s get back to the basics.’”
Of course the basics of “listening to God speaking to us, respecting creation, and being artisans of peace” can be a challenge in a world where ever-advancing technology has made rest a relic of a bygone era and true silence extinct, but in this issue’s cover article, Father Bradley Jantz, pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Parish in Montevallo, looks to the beautiful words of Pope Leo XIV found in his encyclical on AI, which just so happened to be the inspiration for this issue’s cover.
“As a believer among believers,” the pope writes, “I invite everyone to contemplate, in the face of the Son of God, the grandeur of humanity that shines a light also on the era of AI. In Christ, we are called to cooperate in the work of creation, rather than be disinterested observers of technological processes that limit our freedom and responsibility. The dignity inscribed in each of us by the Holy Spirit can also be seen in our capacity to reflect critically, choose and love freely, and form authentic relationships. No computational system, however sophisticated, can create a heart that gives itself, or a conscience that discerns good from evil. Even when machines excel in efficiency, a human face that asks to be gazed upon remains the center of our history. This human face is the fullness toward which history is moving. It is the mystery of ‘recapitulation’: the certainty that the Father has decreed to bring all things, those in Heaven and those on earth, back to Christ, the one Head. (cf. Eph 1:10) In this plan, nothing will be lost that is authentically human. Indeed, everything will be purified and reunited in the One, Who gathers every fragment of life, every tear and every authentically human achievement, rescuing them from nothingness and delivering them, redeemed, to the Father.” (Magnifica Humanitas 233)
So, in moments of weakness, the mind might wonder, “Does human life even matter?” I would like to offer an unequivocal, “Yes!”