It’s more enduring than last Tuesday.
It’s more enduring than last Tuesday.
‘T rue victory does not lie in seeking to prevail over others, but in giving yourselves to them.”
So the first pope born in the United States said after the midterm election results. He had already made the news when we found out he voted in Illinois via absentee ballot (where an accurate vote count is miraculous). And then it was hard to escape that, in a major statement after the election, he reflected on victory.
He had a different kind of victory in mind, of course, than the sweeping Democratic victory/Republican rout. And yet, at the same time, it had everything to do with both.
The words were part of a preparation for the 41st World Youth Day, upcoming in August, hosted in South Korea. These celebrations were started by Pope John Paul II, after two successful youth gatherings in Rome in the years before. I’ve only been to one, with Pope Francis, in Poland, and it might as well have been an act of gratitude to John Paul II in his native land about the youth movement he started. That summer, as we met in Krakow — I moderated a panel on religious freedom at Tauron Arena with 22,000 English-speaking people, mostly college-age and younger, in the audience. The room erupted in support of Iraqi Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda, knowing he was a hero, having not only survived but was all-in on providing shelter, healing, and a future for those who had fled the so-called Islamic State genocide in his Archdiocese of Erbil. To this day, they live in danger, but they do so with courage. At the same time that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were being nominated by their respective political conventions as nominees for president, a non-insignificant number of American kids had their priorities in order. When the young ones gather in South Korea this summer, talking heads will be drowning already in the 2028 presidential election. But there’s more to life than politics, thanks be to God. And the kids who know that are on the road to being all right for eternity.
In his message, Pope Leo did acknowledge the obvious. The very word “victory” has us thinking of winning and losing in a worldly way. “Some might think it means being stronger than others, asserting ourselves or constantly having to prove our worth,” he writes. “But those are the kinds of victories promoted by the prevailing mentality — the victories of a world without God. When we look to Jesus, we discover a different kind of victory.”
Drawing on Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (2:6–7), Leo noted that Christ, “though he was in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” He continued: “The Son of God humbles himself because his love is freely given: he has nothing to prove and nothing to secure for himself. In humbling himself, he does not lose his dignity; rather, he reveals the greatness and depth of his divine heart, capable of giving life to those who were dead. His victory is the victory of love that gives itself without counting the cost.”
I’ll give Democrat Senator-Elect James Talarico some credit for turning down the rhetorical volume with talk about loving your neighbor, but when he insists the Bible is silent on abortion, it’s hard to listen for all that long. He is, however, preferable to Michigan’s Dem senator-elect, Abdul El-Sayed, whose victory speech Election Night seemed but a fist away from coming to blows with the vice president, JD Vance. He already has his swearing-in in January surrounded by charged expectation.
This is the message Pope Leo wants us all to heed, even if we feel so weary we don’t even know if young-at-heart is plausible: “True victory does not lie in seeking to prevail over others, but in giving yourselves to them. By following the path opened by Jesus Christ, you too have no need to impose yourselves, to constantly prove your worth, to appear perfect or to conceal your weaknesses, doubts and limitations. Have the courage to be your true selves before God and others.”
Unsurprisingly, Leo gets into humility for courage and victory. And it’s really all about identity. Who are you in relationship with God? How many people don’t fully appreciate that we are creations of a Creator?
Pope Leo writes: “Your dignity does not come from the image you manage to create for yourselves. You are precious because you have been created in the image of God, known by him and loved by him.” That takes not only humility but a physical pause for the silence of prayer. In that miracle in our culture that suffocates us with screens, he says: “We discover who we truly are when we recognize that our hearts were created for God: to love him and, in him, to love our brothers and sisters. Indeed, deep within us is the desire to give of ourselves, to devote our lives to the happiness and well-being of others. This is the freedom Christ offers you: the freedom to move beyond an exclusive concern for yourselves and to open your hearts to the generous creativity of love.”
What Leo issued on his way to his now-ongoing Latin America trip goes well beyond Donald Trump and his successors, Republican and Democratic, both. The real victory for the believer is about faith in something much more enduring. And being a believer isn’t even a prerequisite: Do you believe there has to be something more than election victories? If you don’t, you truly have my prayers.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.