In marketing parlance, there is a concept known as the “elevator speech,” in which one tries to deliver a compelling idea in less than two minutes, or the length of an elevator ride. Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk comes close to an elevator speech summary of Catholic beliefs in this video from TeamRCIA:
Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk from TeamRCIA on Vimeo.
Okay, so the speech was eight minutes, but the summary didn’t begin until about 3 minutes in. In any case, it’s a terrific distillation of Catholic teaching. It’s simple enough that it could be presented to young children, yet profound enough that it could be meditated upon. Here’s my transcription of just the summary portion of the archbishop’s presentation:
The most important thing in the world is that God is madly in love with us. There’s no reason for it, God just loves us. That’s why there is a world. That’s why each of us is here. God has loved us for a long time, ever since the beginning of human history. And God has never stopped loving us, even when human beings made a mess of things and did their best to forget about God’s love for them.
But that’s not all.
God loves us so much that he wanted to be one of us. In Jesus God became a human being not just to tell us who and what God is, but also to show us who and what we are supposed to be. Jesus was faithful to that mission even when it cost him his life.
But that’s not all.
Jesus is still alive, because his heavenly father wouldn’t let him stay dead. Jesus is with us still and has sent us the Holy Spirit that unites him and the Father to make us live God’s life in addition to our own. To be part of that life, we don’t have to earn it, and we don’t have to deserve it. All we have to do is accept what Jesus offers us, and then act in accord with what he has made us to be.
But that’s not all.
Jesus has established a community of those who have accepted him so that none of us ever needs to be alone. Jesus nourishes that community with himself and he marks every major moment in the life of every member with his personal action in the sacraments.
But even that is not all.
God loves us so much that this life of Jesus that we have been given to share will never end. God wants us with him forever. No matter how confusing and painful our life may be, we have God’s guarantee of final fulfillment. In the most literal sense, God has promised us that everything is going to be all right. God invites us to take constant joy in hope.
But there’s still more.
Because we share the life of Jesus, we share the mission of Jesus. Each of us is called to extend the love and care of the Lord to those around us. We may not seem as individuals to have all that much to offer, but what we do have to offer is eternally important because it’s not just ourselves that we offer, but the Lord Jesus himself. The Lord has chosen to need each one of us to get his work done. Nobody’s life is insignificant.
The long and the short of it is that God is crazy about us, and once we accept that, everything else falls into place.
