“War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading.” These words were spoken by Pope Leo in the Pope’s annual New Year’s address to the diplomatic corps on January 9. In his address he drew heavily on St. Augustine’s The City of God. He called it, “one of the most powerful of (Augustine’s) theological, philosophical and literary works.” This classic has long sat on my bookshelf but, I shamefully admit, remains unread by me. I have been inspired by Pope Leo’s address to change that.

The City of God proposes the model of two cities, the City of God and the earthly city, which co-exist until the end of time. Pope Leo says that “Augustine emphasizes that Christians are called by God to dwell in the earthly city with their hearts and minds turned towards the Heavenly city, their true homeland. At the same time, Christians living in the earthly city are not strangers to the political world, and, guided by the Scriptures, seek to apply Christian ethics to civil government.”

As a disciple of Jesus with a vocation to the social teaching of the Church, this has always been so important to me. Having our hearts and minds turned towards the Heavenly city does not mean that our backs are turned towards the earthly one. Rather, it is precisely our orientation towards the Heavenly city that guides our engagement with our earthly home. 

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What is interesting to me about the City of God and the Earthly City are their respective ruling forces. Augustine writes, “Two loves have made two cities: the love of self, even to the contempt of God, made the earthly city; the love of God, even to the contempt of self, made the Heavenly city.”

Our choice with respect to these two loves is the means by which we choose our ‘rulers’. A disordered love of self is synonymous with what Pope Leo says is “the thirst for worldly power and glory that leads to destruction.” The love of God is the only check on the power of love of self. War is back in vogue because the institutions that humanity has created to check the power of the earthly city, such as international law, are crumbling as hearts and minds turn more towards the earthly city than our heavenly one.

Pope Leo referred to this when he said, “Peace is no longer sought as a gift and a desirable good in itself, or in the pursuit of the establishment of the ordered universe willed by God, with a more perfect form of justice among men and women. Instead, peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion.  This gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence.”

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Who determines the rule of law though? For the Church, it is not the mere subjective whim of the powerful. It is determined by God. There is an ongoing communal discernment by the human family through history to come to an ever-fuller understanding of God’s moral universal law. This law is “written on the human heart” and “must be considered effective and indelible as the living expression of the shared conscience of humanity, a ‘grammar’ on which to build the future of the world.” (Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church, 436)

What are we to do when humanity is forgetting the Heavenly city and falling prey to leaders who give them false visions of earthly power? 

We must call on the power of God.  This is the power of Jesus who hung on a cross and yet did not succumb to the violence of death. We must not be afraid to call forward the moral universal law written on human hearts. In Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Venezuela, Iran, and every other place in the world where men “thirst for worldly power and glory,” we must give witness to the Heavenly city and remind the powerful of their accountability to God. I am reminded of Saint Oscar Romero’s voice vibrating with energy through the radio waves as he cried out to those who were murdering his people, “in the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people, whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you! In the name of God: stop the repression!”

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