For Auld Lang Syne
Remembering God in an Age of Unrest
The year now behind us carried the weight of an entire era rather than the simple turning of a calendar page. Anyone paying attention felt the sensation of standing beneath converging fault lines where politics, culture, technology, and faith pressed upon one another with accelerating force. Any honest recap resists sentbut instead requires clear memory, disciplined judgment, and a willingness to see patterns that extend beyond headlines.
The past year served as a concentrated tutorial in how fragile modern confidence has become when stripped of transcendent reference. Within the life of the Church, the most significant event arrived with the passing of Pope Francis. The end of his pontificate closed one chapter while opening another entirely. The election of Pope Leo XIV introduced a new tone and renewed curiosity about continuity, authority, and memory.
The global response revealed a Church still capable of commanding attention across continents, even amid internal tensions and external skepticism. Papal history once again reminded the world that the Catholic Church lives within time while refusing to belong entirely to it. This transition marked a pivotal moment for Catholic identity and mission in an increasingly secular world.
The political order continued its long season of turbulence throughout 2025. The return of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States reactivated every unresolved argument of the previous decade. Public discourse reverted to a familiar register of outrage, triumphalism, anxiety, and moral accusation. The electorate appeared fractured along lines that no longer align neatly with policy preferences alone, since deeper anthropological and moral assumptions now drive political allegiance.
Elections increasingly function as referendums on identity rather than instruments of governance. This shift reveals something profound about where American culture finds itself after decades of moral relativism and the abandonment of shared first principles. The political becomes personal when societies lose their common understanding of human nature and divine purpose.
Globally, violence maintained its grim persistence across multiple theaters. The war in Ukraine dragged onward, punctuated by exhausted ceasefires that inspired more fatigue than hope. The conflict in Gaza continued its devastating cycle, where ancient grievances met modern weaponry and civilians paid the highest price. Diplomatic language strained under the weight of competing narratives, each insisting upon moral urgency while producing little lasting peace.
History repeated its familiar lesson that technological sophistication never redeems the human heart. Advanced weaponry in the hands of unredeemed humanity produces the same tragic results that have plagued civilization since Cain killed Abel. The fundamental problem remains anthropological rather than technological.
Cultural shock compounded political strain with moments that felt surreal even by contemporary standards. The killing of Charlie Kirk sent tremors through global public life, revealing how rhetorical escalation increasingly spills into physical consequence. The collapse of basic civic restraint appeared less theoretical and more immediate than many had anticipated.
Reports surrounding a potential Louvre heist captured global fascination, suggesting that even the guardians of civilization’s artistic memory remain vulnerable to disorder. Symbols once thought secure now appear provisional. These events demonstrated that cultural institutions require more than physical protection; they need the moral foundation that only transcendent truth can provide.
Meanwhile, the relentless advance of artificial intelligence reshaped economic expectations, professional identities, and ethical debate. The AI boom promised efficiency, predictive power, and unprecedented automation. At the same time, it quietly unsettled assumptions about creativity, responsibility, and human uniqueness. Societies rushed to adopt tools they barely understood, guided more by competitive fear than moral clarity.
Technology once again sprinted ahead of anthropology, leaving institutions to improvise meaning after the fact. The question of what makes humans distinctive becomes urgent when machines can replicate increasing numbers of human capabilities. Only a robust theology of the human person can provide adequate answers.
Taken together, these events created an atmosphere of constant alertness. Many people lived as though history itself had lost coherence, replaced by a succession of emergencies demanding immediate reaction. This condition explains the pervasive exhaustion that settled across cultures, since perpetual crisis offers stimulation without wisdom. The year functioned as a mirror reflecting modern humanity’s inability to rest within any stable horizon of meaning.
At this point, a theological perspective becomes less optional and more necessary. Scripture repeatedly situates human turmoil within a broader narrative of divine governance. Israel’s political history alone testifies to this pattern with remarkable candor. Kings rose and fell, alliances shifted, temples stood and collapsed, exiles shattered national confidence, and prophets spoke words that sounded implausible at the moment of utterance.
Confusion never indicated abandonment, since covenant fidelity operated beneath visible chaos. Consider Israel’s monarchy, where moments of apparent strength often preceded collapse, while seasons of humiliation prepared renewal. The biblical record resists any simplistic equation between power and blessing. God’s purposes advanced through unlikely figures, interrupted institutions, and prolonged waiting.
Salvation history unfolded through patience rather than spectacle, even when events appeared unmanageable to human calculation. This pattern offers interpretive clarity for the present moment. The accumulation of global unrest reflects a deeper amnesia rather than a merely strategic failure.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed with chilling precision, “Men have forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.” That sentence, delivered without flourish, explains more than volumes of sociological analysis. When societies forget God, they also forget the limits of power, the meaning of dignity, and the necessity of repentance.
From this vantage point, the year’s turbulence appears less mysterious. Politics detached from moral truth becomes performative struggle. Technology severed from wisdom becomes domination. Culture unmoored from transcendence becomes spectacle. Unrest multiplies because nothing binds competing wills into a shared vision of the good.
History continues forward, yet without a compass capable of orienting progress toward human flourishing. Restlessness grips modern sensibilities with remarkable speed, especially within an ecosystem where entire careers depend upon monetizing anxiety with professional efficiency. A steady chorus of pundits thrives by peddling angst, conspiracy, controversy, and suspicion, each update framed as urgent, dire, and indispensable to survival.
This marketplace of alarm trains the soul to remain perpetually agitated, since calm offers fewer clicks and serenity rarely sponsors a podcast. Christians face a subtle temptation to confuse vigilance with virtue and agitation with insight, all while spiritual focus erodes quietly in the background.
The corrective arrives with disarming simplicity. We cling to the Cross, since history already turned there. We cling to the Resurrection, since death already lost its claim. We cling to Christ’s finished work, since redemption already stands accomplished. We cling to the Ascension, since authority already rests in wounded hands enthroned in glory.
Allegiance clarifies when distractions multiply. There is no king except Jesus and no lord except Christ. Earthly convulsions, media cycles, and speculative dread possess limited jurisdiction over a soul anchored in divine sovereignty. Joy persists without denial, peace endures without naivety, and serenity remains available to those who live as citizens of a Kingdom already established and already victorious.
As a new year begins, the appropriate response requires recalibration rather than panic. Faith insists that God remains sovereign even when events feel incoherent. Scripture never promises serenity through human mastery, yet it repeatedly affirms divine fidelity through disorder. Hope emerges through remembrance, prayer, repentance, and renewed obedience rather than through novelty or acceleration.
The Church’s task within such a moment involves witness more than commentary. Catholic faith situates every age within a covenantal drama that culminates in Christ. No election, conflict, or technological revolution escapes the horizon of redemption. The Paschal mystery stands as the interpretive key that renders suffering intelligible without rendering it trivial.
Through that lens, even a tumultuous year becomes material for conversion. Scripture directs attention inward before it directs reform outward. The ancient lament still speaks with undiminished urgency: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and heal their land.”
The cry of exile echoes alongside it: “Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored.” Together, these words frame the only renewal that endures, since history heals when humanity remembers God and returns to Him with an undivided heart. The year behind us taught us that human solutions reach their limits quickly, while divine mercy remains inexhaustible for those who seek it with sincere hearts.