On the day of Pentecost, after the Holy Spirit descended as tongues of fire upon the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin, Saint Peter went out and gave a homily, in which he exhorted the crowd:

“Save yourselves from this wicked generation.”

These words have been echoing in my mind a lot lately. English translations of this passage often use the words “corrupt” or “perverse” instead of “wicked”, but all of these terms apply to the world that we live in (I just personally like “wicked” the best).

As I write this, within just the past few weeks: Charlie Kirk, one of the most prominent Christian political voices today, was tragically assassinated; Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, was brutally stabbed to death on a bus in an unprovoked attack; and a Catholic school chapel full of children was shot up by a satanic maniac during Mass, resulting in the injury of several people and the death of two children, 8 year old Fletcher Alexander Merkel, and 10 year old Harper Lillian Moyski. These are just the most prominent violent events; there have been plenty of others lately, as well.

These events are incredibly horrific, but they are part of a pattern of extreme violence that has been escalating for many years in our country, and it’s becoming more and more difficult not to despair over the state of society.

What motivated me to write this, though, is a desire to bring peace to your heart.

It’s true that we live in a very wicked, corrupt, perverse generation — this is becoming clearer every day, not only because of these horrific acts of violence, but because of the countless people celebrating them, justifying them, and calling for even more violence. It’s sickening.

But what should our response be, as Christians?

The Apostolic Solution

Let’s look at the advice that Saint Peter gave to the crowd on Pentecost:

When they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other Apostles, “What are we to do, brethren?” Peter answered, “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise that was made is for you, for your children, and for all those who are far away, for all those whom the Lord our God will call.”

He offered further testimony with many other arguments as he exhorted them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” Those who accepted his message were baptized, and on that day about three thousand people were added to their number. They devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles and to the communal fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayers.

A sense of awe was felt by all, for many wonders and signs were performed by the Apostles. All the believers were together and owned everything in common. They would sell their property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to all according to what each one needed. Every day, united in spirit, they would assemble together in the temple. They would break bread in their homes and share their food with joyful and generous hearts as they praised God, and they were regarded with favor by all the people. And day by day the Lord added to those who were being saved.

(The Acts of the Apostles 2:37-47)

So, how did the first Christians respond to the evil world in which they were living? How did they save themselves from their wicked generation?

• Baptism — if you are not yet Christian, you absolutely should be.
• Repentance — turn away from sin, go to confession, and resolve to become a saint.
• Devotion to the teaching of the Apostles — which today has been preserved and passed down to us through the Catholic Church. So, if you are not yet Catholic, you absolutely should be.
• Communal fellowship, “the breaking of bread” (i.e. the Eucharist), and prayers — participate in the holy sacrifice of the Mass as often as possible.
• “All believers were together and owned everything in common, selling their property and distributing the proceeds to all according to what each one needed” — Christians today must prioritize living in community with one another like this. We need to come together and support each other far more than we have been in recent times. We cannot afford to be so spread out and isolated within this evil world.
• “They would break bread in their homes and share their food with joyful and generous hearts as they praised God” — give thanks to God for all things, live with gratitude, with joyful and generous hearts, and praise God always.

In summary, the way that we save ourselves from this wicked generation is simply by living out our Christian faith.

Looking Inward

When public tragedies happen, we tend to focus on what sort of changes we might make to society, to our laws, to our government, to our public discourse, etc. We want to figure out a way to prevent things like this from happening again. And yes, often there is public action that we can and should take in response to these horrific events. But we cannot forget what’s even more important: the action that we must take in our own lives.

We’re always looking outside of ourselves for solutions to the evils around us — we want to change the world, but what we really need is to change ourselves. The world is evil, it has been since the Fall and it will be until the end of time. Nothing that we do will change that fact, because people have free will, and many people freely choose to fight against God. As much as we wish that we could prevent people from making evil choices, we simply can’t, because we cannot control other people. Look at Charlie Kirk’s murderer, he was raised in a conservative Christian family, his own father had the moral fortitude to turn his own son into the police when he realized he was the killer. And yet, despite being raised in and surrounded by this good, Christian, moral family, he chose to align himself with Satan and commit heinous acts of evil.

Now, it’s clear that he was influenced by the culture — this wicked generation poisoned his mind with ideas and beliefs that seemed good to him, but are in fact evil. For better or for worse, culture seems to play a significant role in shaping the youth, often even more so than their own parents. But what can we do about that? How is a culture formed? How does it develop? How does it change?

While quite a complex phenomenon, culture is essentially nothing more than the collective thoughts, beliefs, and ideas of a group of people. What this means is that you cannot force a culture to change from the top down — you cannot change a culture in order to change individuals. Rather, in order to change a culture, you must first change the individuals. This means that if we want to live in a Christian culture, the only way to achieve this is to convert the individuals in our society to Christianity — genuinely, sincerely, not by force. If we changed all of our laws overnight to align with Christian morality, do you think it would suddenly make all of these evil people good, morally upstanding citizens? Of course not.

The solution to the evil that surrounds us is no different now than it has ever been or ever will be:

You must become a saint.

What Is Truly At Stake

I know that it might seem flippant for me to say that the solution to our crumbling society is simply for you to keep working on becoming as holy as you can (by God’s grace), but that’s really the only true answer. Lots of people are saying that Charlie’s assassination changes everything, but in regards to our mission as Christians and the general solution to all of our problems, it changes nothing. Every single problem that we could possibly have in this world is, fundamentally, a spiritual problem. We often fail to recognize this, because we are too attached to this world, too immersed in its distractions. But the fact is, everything that we perceive as a problem in this life is the result of our lack of holiness — yet it is also always an opportunity to grow in holiness.

For example, I have road rage because I lack holiness, but my having road rage is also an opportunity for me to grow in holiness by resisting my sinful compulsions and urges. This is the case with all of our problems, personal and collective. Our current perverse society is the result of a lack of holiness among us and our ancestors — but our living in this perverse society is also an opportunity for all of us to grow in holiness. And that’s the only thing that will actually heal our society: if we grow in holiness. Many people right now want to make new laws, or to enforce existing laws in an even more extreme way, and it certainly may be good and prudent and helpful in some ways to do such things. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t take legal action where we can, or make changes in various areas of society. But all of these changes must be motivated by our desire for sanctity if they are going to do any real good.

Ultimately, our laws and our government cannot save our souls — and our souls matter far more than our earthly lives. Yes, we should do whatever we can to protect ourselves and our fellow citizens, to keep each other safe, to reduce violence and crime, etc. But we cannot make our physical safety and well-being our highest goal, instead we must keep our eyes fixed on eternity. And often that’s going to mean caring more about our spiritual safety and security than our physical safety and security. Charlie Kirk understood this, which is why he put himself at risk in order to spread the truth and goodness of God. While his murder is a tragedy, his martyrdom is beautiful, because he died in the service of God, and that’s really the best thing that any of us could hope to do.

Everything in this world is temporary, all of the suffering that we experience here is passing, and it will eventually evaporate into nothing. So we cannot let it distract us from the ultimate reality that is God and Heaven.

I have plenty more that I want to say about what we should do, practically, as Christians, to help make ourselves and our society holier. But I’ll save that for my next post.

For now, I’ll leave you with this simple yet powerful quote from Saint Teresa of Avila:

Let nothing disturb you, 
Let nothing frighten you. 
All things are passing away; 
God never changes. 
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing; 
God alone suffices.

I ask you all to pray for our world with me. Pray for all of those who are victims of evil, but also pray for those who perpetrate evil. Pray for Charlie Kirk, for Iryna Zarutska, for Fletcher Alexander Merkel, and for Harper Lillian Moyski.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Amen.

God love you.