For centuries, theology sought God in the heavens, in metaphysical systems, and in the solitude of temples. Yet the biblical tradition preserves a simple, though demanding, intuition: God does not desire to be adored from afar, but encountered. The privileged place of that encounter is neither an idea nor a religious concept, but the concrete reality of the human person whom we call our neighbor.
In Christianity, God is not presented as an abstract force governing the universe. He is a presence that draws near to the human being and addresses him. The authenticity of the bond we establish with God is revealed in the way we welcome, respect, and care for others. The First Epistle of John expresses it with unmistakable clarity: “Whoever does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”
By revealing that God is love, the Gospel moves the religious experience from the realm of abstraction into the terrain of concrete life. It is not a passing emotion, but a commitment to human dignity. It was this conviction that led Saint Augustine to affirm that the human heart remains restless until it finds its rest in God. Yet this encounter often takes place beside those who suffer, those who bear injustice, and those who stand in need of our presence. Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) deepened this intuition by defending the idea that our relationship with God begins, at its very origin, in the ethical relationship with the face of the other.
In the vulnerability of another person, we discover the inescapable summons to responsibility. The transcendence of God thus ceases to signify an escape from the world and instead reveals itself in a concrete commitment to human dignity and to justice. Faith loses its authenticity whenever it becomes indifferent to the suffering of others. Whenever it grows accustomed to injustice or neglects the defense of the most vulnerable, religion abandons its path of liberation and becomes a form of idolatry, betraying the very God it professes to serve.
Paradoxically, never before have we possessed so many means of communication, and yet never have we seemed so vulnerable to indifference. We witness the suffering of entire peoples in real time, only to return shortly afterward to our routines as though nothing had happened. The abundance of information, instead of awakening conscience, becomes a habit of evil, an indifference to the suffering of others.
Perhaps the central problem of our age is not the absence of faith, but the difficulty of recognizing the inviolable dignity of every human person. When the economy reduces human beings to numbers, when politics turns lives into statistics, and when culture measures a person’s worth by utility alone, something profoundly sacred is being denied to humanity.
The German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner (1904–1984), one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century Catholic theology, affirmed that the Christian of the future would be a mystic—a mysticism born from the capacity to recognize God’s presence at the heart of history, in the ordinary fabric of existence, and above all in the encounter with every human being. Faith becomes a living experience when it discovers in each person a dignity that transcends every social, economic, or ideological classification.
To love one’s neighbor, beyond being a moral obligation, requires participation in the ideological dynamic proclaimed by the Gospels. Every gesture of hospitality, every act of justice, and every expression of solidarity makes the presence of God visible among us.
In a civilization built upon competition and in a culture that transforms everything into merchandise, love remains a revolutionary act. God reveals Himself in what we are capable of doing for one another. The presence of Christ among us came to show that humanity is the place where the Divine has chosen to manifest itself.
To encounter one’s neighbor in the face of God is to understand that no life is expendable and no suffering can ever be regarded as someone else’s concern. Faith thus ceases to be merely an intellectual assent to a philosophical truth and becomes instead a way of inhabiting the world in solidarity.
Henrique Levy— Poet and novelist
(translated by Diniz Borges)