The spiritual course of modernity has been tragic: beginning under the banner of exalting the individual's dignity, it ended in the destruction, perhaps the most serious that history has so far known, of the individual himself. Why did all this happen? Was it due to the introduction of an element extraneous to this process or had the seeds of that "destruction of the individual" already been sown at the start, as some who saw those seeds being sown have thought (e.g. Pascal)? I will attempt to return to this question later. For the moment, it enables us to enter directly into the very heart of the "Gospel of life". We are living in a situation where man has come to be so bitterly resigned that he is no longer disturbed by the loss of himself. He simply thinks he can make a covenant with death, considering himself fit to be in its possession (cf. Wis 1:16). What does the Church do? The one thing she had to do: proclaim the Gospel of life to this man, the wonderful news that his life is an incomparable good and that he is not fit to belong to death. 

1. The foundations of dignity

The Church derives this certitude from the very act of faith on which she is founded. "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life" (Jn 3:16). That is, "The Gospel of life is something concrete and personal, for it consists in the proclamation of the very person of Jesus" (Evangelium vitae, n. 29). A simple human experience can help us understand this mystery. The death of a beloved person for the bereaved person who loves him is the most incomprehensible event that can happen: pure nonsense. The person loved deserves unconditionally to live because it is good, it is wonderful for him to exist. Goodness and beauty deserve (and have in themselves the need) to exist: metaphysically one could even say that they are transcendentally connected with being. But if death is such for those who love, the same death of this same person is a natural event for those who do not love: logical (not absurd) and totally comprehensible (not pure folly). Who is right? Who is telling the truth? The one who loves (the death of this person is incomprehensible) or the one who does not love (the death of this person is logical)? The ultimate difference between those who believe in the Gospel of Life and those who ally themselves with death lies in how this question is answered. The first answer can seem reasonable and true on one condition only: that every human person is loved by an infinite Power. In fact those who love cannot allow the loved one to die, and if they could, they would always prevent it. If they could! Finite love is powerless. Infinite love is all-powerful. This is precisely the Church's certitude: "God so loved the world...", God loves every individual human person, "human beings ... are the personal objects of God's loving and fatherly providence" (61:2), and therefore the human person has an unconditional right to life. The paganism of the past denied the existence of this Gaze directed to every man, and denied that man's life was defended by a Power stronger than death. Today's paganism has sought "to hide far from God's presence" (cf. Gn 4:14 and Evangelium vitae, n. 21) and has denied that every human being has an unconditional right to life. 

Where does the Church's certainty that God does not want man to die but to live come from? "...that he sent his only Son". It was the death of the only Son that revealed the dignity and value of every man's life. "The blood of Christ, while it reveals the grandeur of the Father's love, shows how precious man is in God's eyes, and how priceless the value of his life" (n. 25). The author of the Letter to the Hebrews Introduces us into the mystery of a death that reveals the value of life (cf. 2:14-17). 

Christ's death is an absolutely unique event; there is nothing conventional about it. Its singularity and uniqueness is that it was a radically free choice of the God made man. No necessity is discernible in this choice other than that of the love which cannot allow the loved one to remain in death. And the loved one was in death, in the grip of death. He made himself little less than the angels in order to take man from where he found him, in the nothingness of death, to bring him back to life through the Resurrection. "Precisely by contemplating the precious Blood of Christ, the sign of his self-giving love, the believer learns to recognize and appreciate the almost divine dignity of every human being" (ibid., n. 25 and nn. 5~51). 

But why does God show so much interest in man? When did this interest begin? When did the human person, every human person, begin to be seen in this light and therefore desired for ever? Reliving to the full this same experience of Israel (cf. ibid., n. 31), the Church discovers that this glance goes back to the moment when the person himself began, since the creative act that makes the person a living being is, precisely, this loving-desiring gaze. This divine glance and this divine will are the very definition of the creative act. The Church's Tradition has expressed this truth in two sublime formulas whose content coincide: man is the only creature in this visible world to be a person (Gregory of Nyssa-Basil): man is the only creature desired for his own sake (St Thomas). Referring precisely to the creative act, the Encyclical has dared to assert that human life "...reflects the inviolability of the Creator himself" (n. 53:3 ). If we try to ask ourselves: "But when was I created, that is, seen in this way for the first time?", the answer is simple and prompt: when I was conceived. The dignity of the person conceived, the presence in him of the very inviolability of the Creator are based on this (cf. n. 44 45). In this case too, the ilght of faith helps reason to be itself. Based on the creative act, the inviolability and dignity of the human nerson is also perceptible to those who do not believe. It is enough to open the eyes of the spirit: how can one not see that being someone is infinitely different and greater than being something? (cf. n. 77, 2). 

2. The denial of dignity

Something unusual has happened in the course of modernity and it can happen in the heart of each of us: to hide from the creative and redeeming gaze of the Father. "I must avoid your presence" (Gn 4:14) are Cain's words cited by the Encyclical (cf. nn. 21-23). "The heart of the tragedy being experienced by modern man: the eclipse of the sense of God and of man" (n. 21, 1). By breaking his relationship with God as the reason for his own existence, man has chosen to be his own foundation: to be himself the reason for his own being. It should be noted that we are not speaking of that act of freedom which is sin and which always implies an "aversio a Deo". We are speaking of a spiritual event, which is different and more radical and overwhelming: to want to base oneself on oneself and no longer on the Power who is our foundation. At the same time, man sees himself entrusted with the task of justifying reality itself. The beginning of the life of the spirit is no longer (as St Thomas so marvellously expressed it) the mere vision of existence, but a question: "why is there being instead of nothing?". Man has collapsed under this burden and has now reached the resigned boredom of an existence which no longer knows where it comes from or where it is going: it is satisfied with merely being. On virtually every page, Evangelium vitae points out that this spiritual crisis could only generate a culture of death. A culture which has finally reached the moment of ''attributing to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others" (n. 20, 3). The essential co-ordinates of this culture of death are two forms of despair. There is the despair of obstinacy (Kirkegaard): not to want to be what one is, i.e., undeserving of death. And there is a despair of weakness: not to be able to be what one is and thus to call death an achievement of civilization (as has been the case with abortion and as is happening with euthanasia). At this point this second form of despair prevails, and thus there is only boredom, which people seek to avoid at all costs. 

Conclusion: the kiss of mercy

"I am not so great!", the man of today seems to say to the Church which proclaims the Gospel of life to him, and therefore he immediately adds: "you are asking too much of me". Man, it is said, is not totally undeserving of death and thus one cannot demand that no one's life, under any circumstances, should ever be violated. This desperation is due precisely to weakness. So what does the Church do to this man, despairing more through weakness than obstinacy? What Christ did to the Grand Inquisitor, who even reproached him with having too great an esteem for man. The Church puts argument aside: she kisses him with the kiss of God's mercy and this is why she proclaims the Gospel of life to him.