The failure of a mirage and the problem that the Church poses for many politicians

Sometimes I get the feeling that those of us who live in cities are unknowingly inhabiting a desert from which we see no way out.

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In this desert, thirst overwhelms us. Often we don't know what drives it, and so we try to quench it with whatever is at hand, like desperate castaways in the middle of the sand. Society frequently sends us mirages to follow. These mirages tell us that we'll be better off if we follow certain trends, if we own more things, if we trust this or that ideological recipe, or if we pay attention to what the media tells us daily. Between one thing and another, they send us messages about how to be more modern, disregarding the past, tradition, and the values ​​of our parents and grandparents, as if severing those ties would open up a world full of possibilities and freedom. And then we remain thirsty.

The human heart has an unquenchable thirst for love, goodness, truth, and justice, and is incapable of being satisfied by the substitutes that society offers us instead, because the fullness of love, goodness, truth, and justice cannot be found in a world full of hatred, evil, falsehood, and injustice, a world that degrades itself every time it forgets that man is more than just flesh and blood: we thirst for eternity.

Spain has been a predominantly Catholic country for centuries, a country that found in its faith in Christ one of its reasons for navigating the world and undertaking seemingly impossible endeavors. Even today, a strong religious impulse beats in Spain. Against all odds, more and more young Spaniards are returning to the shelter of faith, that faith that guided their ancestors in times of difficulty.

Yesterday, Pope Leo XIV met with thousands of young people in Madrid. Few worldly gatherings could attract so many people, but what is most inexplicable to many is that this old man spoke to them yesterday about God, about faith, about the priestly vocation, about marriage, of the family, of all that, in short, that the apostles of materialism believed they had banished, of all that which many media outlets have been treating with disdain as things belonging to reactionaries.

We are witnessing the collapse of an illusion and the reason why the Church poses a problem for many politicians: because two thousand years later, trends continue to fail in the face of the word of Christ, the Son of God made man, who accepted crucifixion to free us from sin, from that burden that makes our thirst unbearable. We fear politicians, journalists, and inter-election figures who offered us a new religion in exchange for renouncing that desire for eternity, who aspired to banish God from our society to take his place. It is good news to see that this illusion vanishing and that Spain is recovering a path that seemed lost. There is hope.

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Photo: Vatican Media.