ASKING OURSELVES THE GREAT QUESTIONS
For contemporary people, the apocalyptic discourses about «the end of the world» no longer terrify us. Nor do we stop to listen to Jesus’ hopeful message that employs that same language, yet announces the birth of a new world. What we’re concerned about is the «ecological crisis». This isn’t only about a crisis of nature around us. It’s a crisis of our very selves. A global crisis of life on this planet. A deadly crisis not just for human beings, but for the rest of living beings that have been suffering this crisis for a long time.
Little by little we begin to recognize that we have gotten ourselves involved in a dead end, placing the whole system of the world’s life in crisis. Today «progress» isn’t a hopeful word as it was in the last century, since we fear all the more that progress ends up serving no longer life, but death. Humanity begins to have the presentiment that we can’t be certain of a path that is leading to a global crisis, from the extinction of forests even to the propagation of neuroses, from the pollution of our waters to the «existential emptiness» of so many inhabitants of our mega-cities.
To stop the «disaster», it’s urgent to change our course. It’s not enough to substitute «dirty» technologies by others «cleaner», or «savage» industrialization by another that’s «more civilized». Profound changes are needed in the interests that guide development and the progress of technology today. Here begins the drama of modern people. Societies don’t seem to be capable of introducing decisive changes in their system of values and meaning. Immediate economic interests are stronger than any other approach. It’s better to play down the crisis, disqualify «the four exalted ecologists» and favor indifference.
Haven’t we come to the moment of asking ourselves the great questions that permit us to recover the «global meaning» of human existence on the Earth, and to learn to live a more peaceful relationship with each other and with the whole of creation?
What is the world? A «property without owner» that we humans can exploit crassly and without a second thought, or is it the house that the Creator gives us to make more habitable each day? What is the universe? A brute material that we can manipulate at our whim, or the creation of a God who enlivens it through God’s Spirit and guides «the heavens and the earth» toward their definitive consummation?
What is a human being? A lost being in the universe, struggling desperately against nature, but destined to be extinguished without remedy, or a being called by God to live in peace with creation, collaborating in the intelligent guidance of life toward its fulness in the Creator?
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
