Christian Love Research Articles

Peculiarities of religious and secular views on upbringing and moral development

This article analyzes two approaches to the educational process: postsecular, based on John Dewey’s educational project, and religious, based on Sergei Rachinsky’s peasant school project, which was based on the principle of Christian love. The need to analyze these approaches stems from the global challenges that call for a rethinking of the philosophical foundations of contemporary education, which until recently was understood as a “marketplace of educational services”, where all pedagogical approaches and practices are in demand, while the achievements of educational creativity are losing their most important and essential element — human personality development. The secularization tendency leads to haphazardness and randomness in organizing both the educational process and the implementation of pedagogical training, because the processes are in fact dependent on momentary and transient historical, political, cultural, and other circumstances. As a result, an important property of contemporary science is pointed out, which determines the one-sidedness of any purely secular approach to educational problems. This quality is manifested in the fact that contemporary science urgently needs such an integrated discipline as theology, which would unify the diverse achievements of secular science on the basis of traditional values.

DENIS DE ROUGEMONT AND THE WESTERN CONCEPTION OF LOVE

This paper analyses the key areas reached by the Swiss author Denis de Rougemont in his famous work Love in the Western World. We critically read de Rougemont's thought that love-passion, as the basic guiding thread of the myth of Tristan and Isolde, still sovereignly rules the unconscious being of modern man, giving him a one-sided vision of the play about love. Following his argumentation, we examine the connections between courtly and chivalrous love, Cathar heresy and troubadour love poetry. Denis de Rougemont contrasts eros, which ignites passion that descends into the darkness of death, with agape, i.e. the Christian love for one's neighbour. We question whether de Rougemont's solution to the problem of love by establishing merciful love as a necessary moral choice can be a satisfactory answer for modern man.

From ‘Christification’ to Mission of Salvation: Impact of Damascus Event on Saint Paul

Saint Paul is one of the most important apostles in Christianity. The mission of evangelism he carried out was fruitful in various parts of the world. Paul’s missionary journey brought great risks to himself through the challenges and the sufferings, while he was also previously known as a persecutor of Christ’s followers. His radical change or conversion occurred since his spiritual encounter with the Lord Jesus on his journey to Damascus. This article explores the impact of the unforgettable encounter that brings to Paul more admiration and love for Christ, that also brings an extraordinary mystical experience of ‘christification’, an experience of becoming more and more alike and united with the Christ. The Damascus event and the christification open the divine revelation of human salvation. As a Jew, Paul recognises that salvation is obtained by obeying the law, but now he believes that only the risen Jesus Christ is able to save humankind. Paul’s christification brings direct implications to his courage in becoming a follower of Christ with a burning passion to proclaim the Gospel to all nations. God’s choice for an apostle is unfathomable, even for Paul himself who considers himself as the most sinful and unworthy person.

Religions in Shakespeare’s Writings, Edited by David V. Urban

Shakespeare’s engagement with the issue of religion is complex. There can never be an overarching system of religious belief extracted from his writings; instead, there are religions, as demonstrated by vigorous scholarship in recent decades, among which the present collection is a very good example. Fifteen essays appearing first in the journal Religions in 2018 and 2019 are reprinted, preceded by an introduction by the editor. Together they present a complex overview of Shakespeare’s creative use of religious references that can best be summarised, as in the collection’s title, with the plural form ‘religions’. Leading the essays is John D. Cox’s richly informed review of current studies in this field, unveiling a sizeable proportion of scholarly attention paid to tensions between religions in Shakespeare, a point also highlighted in David V. Urban’s introduction. Indeed, Shakespeare’s use of religious elements often results in a paradox. To begin with, certain ambiguities in the plays allow contestations between different religions. Grace Tiffany explores how Shakespeare reforms pagan images and ideas and makes them attain Christian (Calvinist in particular) meanings. As Tiffany argues, Shakespeare’s evocations of Diana, the pagan goddess of virginity, present the playwright favouring marital blessings over celibacy. Marriage takes on different meanings in Benjamin Lockerd’s article, which locates the contestation of religions in Hamlet as between the heretical beliefs of the Albigensians and orthodox Christianity. The Albigensians believe the human flesh to be evil because it belongs to the physical world created by an evil god; therefore, marriage and procreation should be avoided as they bring more sinners to the world. Lockerd argues that such is the message Hamlet hints at when expressing disgust at his bodily existence and when telling Ophelia ‘we will have no more marriage’ (3.1.147). Yet, in the end, the Danish prince claims his love towards Ophelia and asks for pardon before the duel, signalling his possible acceptance of Christian love and forgiveness. Lockerd’s reading further consolidates Hamlet as a hesitant and unsure prince. Equally hesitant is Othello, who shifts back and forth between his Muslim origin and Christian identities, as disclosed in Debra Johanyak’s article. Johanyak argues that Othello’s resorts to punishments on the adulteress resemble those in the Sharia practice. Slapping Desdemona in public can be seen as a symbolic action of 100 lashes on adulterers in the Qur’an, and the final killing of her comes from the desire to restore honour to his name. Yet, Johanyak also shows that Othello does not take action without inner struggles. Also very useful is Johanyak’s account of possible sources of Muslim knowledge accessible to Shakespeare.

The ministry of reconciliation: why the churches owe the message of reconciliation to a divided world

The theme of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches reads: Christ's love moves the world to reconciliation and unity. This subject is obviously a lot timelier than those who chose it may have thought. In these days, what would our world need more than reconciliation, peace and unity? And not only the world is in need of reconciliation, but also the Church. Many of the traditional schisms still exist, but even in the family of Orthodox churches which always has been proud of preserving the unity of the Church there is a deep split. One part of it is of the opinion that the allegiance to the nation and its war is more important than the unity and loyalty with a sister Church. Therefore, the question arises: is it true that “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity”? This article examines what the Bible really says about reconciliation and unity and the effect of Christ's love in view of the Church and the world.

Review of the monograph “The Idea of Good in F. М. Dostoevsky’s Work and Its Influence on the Development of the Philosophy of Law (To the 200th anniversary of F. М. Dostoevsky)”

The collective monograph “Тhе Idea of Good in F. М. Dostoevsky’s Work and Its Influence on тhе Development of the Philosophy of Law (To the 200th anniversary of F. М. Dostoevsky)” has become a significant event in the world of world science that studies issues of international law.Within the framework of this book, great attention is paid to the opposition of the multivector forces of “Good — Evil” in relation to the Russian Federation through the work of F. M. Dostoevsky. Now, on the western borders of the Russian Federation, the actions of a number of western unfriendly states that are members of the NATO military bloc have intensified, which, from the point of view of F. M. Dostoevsky abandoned God and bring evil, vices and death to the whole world. At the same time, the Russian Federation faced an ideological vacuum after the fall of the USSR and the rejection of socialist ideals. The authors show that Russia can offer the world a new civilizational ideology of Good within which there will be a spiritual transformation and liberation of mankind from temptations, strengthening of faith in God, the establishment of Christian love and virtue. The development of the ideology of Good is becoming the historical mission of Russia in the 21st century.

Žižek's Jews

Žižek's Jews Adam Komisaruk In memory of Dennis W. Allen Jews are everywhere in Slavoj Žižek. Jewish jokes are among his most vibrant textual examples; anti-Semitism is one of his most insistent themes, not to mention a tendency of which he himself is sometimes accused. His passionate engagement with theorists both Jewish (Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Levinas, Arendt, Eric Santner) and Jewish-agonistic (Hegel, Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, Heidegger) places identitarian issues front and center. From his earliest English writings onward, the figure of "the Jew" epitomizes for Žižek the convergence of capitalist ideology and psychical fantasy in the modern European imagination. More recently, and in dialogue with thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Zahi Zalloua, and the filmmaker Udi Aloni, Žižek has brought his analytic of violence and neighborliness to bear on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What has received somewhat less attention, however, is the fact that Žižek does not merely instrumentalize Jewishness in the service of an ontological critique, but seems interested in it as such, even if that "as such" demands continual interrogation. His inquiries into the very structure of Jewish belief and subjectivity remain somewhat independent of the gentile construction of Jews on the one hand, and of the Zionist identifications or non-identifications of Jews on the other. Although Žižek is far from endorsing the notion of an "inaccessible X, 'Jewishness' … the trans-phenomenal 'hard kernel of being,'" he recognizes that there is not one but a multiplicity of "Jewish questions," some of which are often posed by as well as about Jews (Tarrying 152). Žižek is a recursive rather than linear thinker, and rarely stays in one place for long. Nevertheless, I organize the following discussion according to what I would very roughly characterize as three phases of his "Jewish" commentaries. In the first, he elaborates the mechanics of anti-Semitism in terms of the Lacanian symptom, an external screen onto which Europe has historically projected its internal anxieties and thereby sustained its illusions of self-completion. The second phase corresponds to Žižek's theological turn; examining Judaism from the inside out rather than the outside in, it takes stock of such matters as the Jewish relation to the law, the status of Jewish guilt, and the supposed supersession of both by Christian love. Žižek's signal argument is that the Jewish law represses not only the parricidal break with paganism that Freud posited, but the vortex of the Che vuoi? that not even the [End Page 156] divine can answer. In the third phase, Žižek trains his eyes on the Middle East as a field where the contradictions of cultural identity play out. While his analysis does not readily translate into practical advice, he urges us to think in terms of intensifying rather than resolving these contradictions—even to the point of acknowledging the "monstrosity" of the national other and (mutually, though irreconcilably) the national self. Across this varied terrain, Žižek consistently attempts to think Jewishness as a dialectic of universality and particularity. That is, in the different roles that interest him—as the victims of centuries-long abuse, as worshipers navigating the injunctions of monotheism, as parties to a violent contestation of political borders—Jews simultaneously represent instantiations of a recurring pattern and an exceptional case. Anti-Semites stereotype Jews as both rootless cosmopolitans and as hopelessly "stuck" in esoteric practices; Jews separate themselves from people of other faiths in order to achieve what is true of people of all faiths, as in their own way do Christians; those who support the Israeli occupation claim to be defending a homeland in the face of atrocities, as in their own way do those who oppose it; and Žižek himself invokes Jews to dramatize the dialectical process where other examples both could and could not possibly suffice. Žižek stubbornly resists any irenic reductions of these paradoxes, because what is common to them—a trauma at the core of the Real that must be both recognized and disavowed—is by definition not generalizable. To deal with identity authentically means to cultivate a plural sense of "universal singularity" or the "concrete universal...

Mapagmalasakit/ Matapobre: Two Different Ways of Looking at the Poor in the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the light of the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study rereads the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. It explores the two ways of looking that the passers-by did when they encountered the man who was robbed and abused by the wayside. I termed these two ways of looking in Filipino as malasakit and matapobre. The priest and the Levite were matapobre (mata: eye/ to look; pobre: poor – literally looking down on the poor) in their reaction in that they saw the man but ignored to aid him. The Good Samaritan showed malasakit (malasin: to look; sakit: pain – looking at pain, being compassionate) because he saw the man and helped him in his misery. In this study, I appropriated the experience of the abused man by the wayside to the experiences of people who suffered the effects of the pandemic. I also enumerated the different displays of the matapobre and the malasakit attitudes of people during this pandemic. The three characters in the Parable all looked down on the poor, yet this looking down should be nuanced. The priest and the Levite looked down with contempt and indifference since they did not do anything for the man they saw. The Samaritan, on the other hand, looked down with his eyes of mercy. I cited Scriptural passages of God and Jesus Christ looking down on humanity, which serves as examples for Christians in their duty to help the poor. Our look of mercy on the poor will obtain for us God’s look of mercy and the privilege of looking at his face forever in heaven.
 
 References
 Papal DocumentsFrancis. Encyclical Letter on Fraternity and Social Friendship, Fratelli Tutti, October 3, 2020, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html Francis. General Audience entitled “Go and do likewise (cf Lk 10:25-37),” (April 27, 2016), http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160427_udienza-generale.html Francis. Angelus Address, July 14, 2019,http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/angelus/2019/documents/papa-francesco_angelus_20190714.html Benedict XVI. Encyclical Letter on Christian Love, Deus Caritas Est, December 25, 2005, http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html John Paul II. Apostolic Letter on the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, Salvifici Doloris, February 11, 1984, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1984/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris.html
 CatechismsCatechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000.Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines ECCCE. Catechism for Filipino Catholics.Manila: Word and Life Publications, 1997.
 BooksBloomberg, Craig L. Interpreting the Parables. 2nd ed. Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2012Byrne, Brendan. The Hospitality of God: A Reading of Luke’s Gospel. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2015.Leoncini, Dante Luis P. “A Conceptual Analysis of Pakikisama [Getting Along Well with People]” in Filipino Cultural Traits: Claro R. Ceniza Lectures, ed. Rolando M. Gripaldo. United States of America: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2005.Ratzinger, Joseph (Benedict XVI). Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker. New York: Doubleday, 2007.
 Journal ArticlesChamburuka Philemon M. and Ishanesu S. Gusha. “An Exegesis of the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25–35) and Its Relevance to the Challenges Caused by COVID-19.” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 76, no. 1 (2020): 1-7, https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v76i1.6096 Redona, Marites Rano. “Malasakit: The Filipino Face of God’s Mercy.” The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies 2018, (Kobe, Japan, 1-3 June 2018): 97-106, https://papers.iafor.org/proceedings/conference-proceedings-ACCS2018/ Roukema, Riemer. “The Good Samaritan in Ancient Christianity.” Vigiliae Christianae, 58, no. 1: 56-74, https://doi.org/10.1163/157007204772812331 Sheqi, Nitoli and Chammah J. Kaunda. “Your Neighbour Is Yourself Reflected in the Mirror of Life A Naga Reading of the Good Samaritan Narrative in the Context of COVID-19.” The Ecumenical Review, 72, no. 4, (2020): 609-623, https://doi.org/10.1111/erev.12545
 Website ContentsBalancio, Joyce. “Duterte naniniwalang dumami ang COVID-19 cases dahil sa pagpapabaya ng publiko,” ABS-CBN News, March 9, 2021, https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/09/21/duterte-naniniwalang-dumami-ang-covid-19-cases-dahil-sa-pagpapabaya-ng-publiko Bible Hub. “Luke 10 Barnes’ Notes on the Bible,” accessed on May 18, 2021, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/barnes/luke/10.htm Brainy Quote. “Stephen Grellet Quotes,” Accessed May 19, 2021, https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/stephen-grellet-quotes Tan, Michael L. “’Matapobre’ Hospitality,” Inquirer.Net, October 4, 2017, https://opinion.inquirer.net/107624/matapobre-hospitality Vatican News, “Hail Holy Queen,” Accessed May 19, 2021, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/prayers/hail-holy-queen.html

Brilliance and Blindspots: New Light on C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves

This paper is a critical re‐evaluation of C.S. Lewis’s classic study of Christian love, The Four Loves (1960) that celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020. After discussing important and neglected differences between the celebrated book and the largely forgotten radio talks which predate it, the paper asks and answers three important questions: Are there really four loves? What is the definition of love itself? What exactly is Charity? Lewis’s answers to these questions are more eclectic than is generally assumed. The paper offers an appreciative rereading of The Four Loves that seeks to correct or at least challenge a number of longstanding misunderstandings about Lewis’s taxonomy of love.

“We Are No Longer in the Time of Elijah”: François de Sales’s Dismantling of Parisian Dévots’s Theology

Scholars have credited the Counter-Reformation fervor of Parisian dévots for renewing Catholic devotion and culture in early modern France. Historians have also deemed François de Sales largely sympathetic to these Parisians’s anti-Protestant vision of Catholic renewal, while acknowledging the distinctiveness of Salesian douceur. Challenging these assertions, this article argues that, in the final chapters of his life, de Sales broke definitively from the militant vision common among dévots as he developed a compelling theology of nonviolence. Drawing on Franciscan intellectual tradition, he defined Christian love as unity, trust, and embrace, dismantling the dévots’s theology of purity, distrust, and violence.

Should polygamous converts partake holy communion? A critical analysis of the SDA DOGMA

The study sought to investigate if polygamous converts in the SDA churches are allowed to partake Holy Communion and compare this with biblical teachings. This study employed the Social Exchange Theory to underpin the study. The study utilised a descriptive survey research design and employed the qualitative research paradigm in exploring the issue in the Biblical context. The target population was one Executive Director, 2,462 church members, 5 pastors and 143 Polygamous converts. The sample size of 464 respondents comprised 344 church members, 105 Polygamous converts, 9 elders, 5 pastors and one Executive Director. Data from the field was collected through interviews and self-administered questionnaires. The study also used simple random and purposive sampling techniques when selecting the sample respondents of one Executive Director, 9 elders and 5 pastors. The data were manually coded, entered into the computer, and analysed through the (SPSS) program. Data were presented descriptively through percentages, tables and figures. The study findings revealed that: 50 per cent of Polygamous converts and church members agreed that the SDA Church should choose whether to partake the Holy Communion or not without exclusion. The study also found that the Bible is silent on polygamy, so Polygamous converts should not be discriminated against. Therefore, the SDA Church should not discriminate against the Polygamous converts but should instead accommodate them and show them the love of Christ.

Kierkegaard’s Deontology of Love

Abstract Deontology is mostly reflected and discussed in connection with Kantian ethics, but in the history of thought there is found another outstanding concept of deontological ethics: Kierkegaard’s ethics of love. This paper clarifies the deontological nature of Kierkegaard’s ethics as it is formulated in his key ethical treatise Works of Love (1847). According to Kierkegaard, whose ethics of love was basically his own original interpretation of the Christian concept of neighbor-love, duty is the distinctive feature of love—since Christian love is defined as a command to ‘love thy neighbor.’ For Kierkegaard it is precisely this duty that creates a dividing line between authentic love and non-authentic love: the first one stands for the Christian love for the neighbor, while the latter refers to the natural concept of love as an emotion or inclination exemplified mainly by éros and friendship. The deontological concept of love is challenged later in the article by other aspects of love, such as a need, feeling, and virtue, which at first sight seem to be in a contrast with the concept of love as a duty.

The Incarnation of Christ's Love through the Church

The incarnation of God through Christ is the incarnation of love. As church, we embody Christ, and therefore we embody Christ’s love. As the body of Christ, it is imperative to actively embody the love of Christ for everyone, reconciling differences and fulfilling God’s plan of the wholeness of life designed for everyone through unity, by participating and working together in and with the spirit of Christ’s love beyond the borders of the church. Thus, the knowledge and the experience of Christ’s love should be experienced by creation through working together, for we need to be part of each other, not be apart from each other.

Kierkegaard on Divine Grace, Human Agency, and Love

Kierkegaard's writings contain seemingly divergent pictures of the relation of God's grace and human works. The differences are evident in the ways that he portrays the connection of human beings’ natural loving capacities to God's gracious enabling of love. What is the relation of human affiliative dispositions, such as attachment to family and friends, to the more extraordinary forms of Christian love, such as loving strangers, enemies, and God? Kierkegaard sometimes stressed the continuity of natural loves and God's grace and sometimes their discontinuity because in different contexts he was pursuing different edifying purposes. On the one hand, he emphasized the continuity of the two when he was attempting to stimulate the appropriate yearning that is a precondition for welcoming God's grace. On the other hand, elsewhere he stressed the difference of the natural loves and Christian love in order to foster an appreciation for the uniqueness and gratuity of God's self-giving.

Newman Vignette

Newman Vignette Saint John Henry Newman He who had the constant contemplation of his Lord and Saviour, and if he saw Him with his bodily eyes, was nevertheless as susceptible of the affections of human nature and the influences of the external world, as if he were a stranger to that contemplation. Wonderful to say, he who had rest and peace in the love of Christ, was not satisfied without the love of man; he whose supreme reward was the approbation of God, looked out for the approval of his brethren. He who depended solely on the Creator, yet made himself dependent on the creature. Though he had That which was Infinite, he would not dispense with the finite. He loved his brethren, not only "for Jesus' sake," to use his own expression, but for their own sake also. [End Page 100] Saint John Henry Newman "St. Paul's Gift of Sympathy," Sermons Preached on Various Occasions Copyright © 2022 National Institute for Newman Studies

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God" (1 John 6:7): Saint John Henry Newman, the Role of Friendship and Personal Influence in the Oxford Movement

It might be supposed that the Son of God Most High could not have loved one man more than another; or again, if so, that He would not have had only one friend, but, as being All-holy, he would have loved all men more or less in proportion to their holiness. Yet we find our Saviour had a private friend; and this shows us, first, how entirely He was a man, as much as any of us, in His wants and feelings; and next, that there is nothing inconsistent with the fullness of Christian love, in having our affections directed in an especial way towards certain objects, towards those whom the circumstances of our past life, or some peculiarities of character, have endeared to us.

Spirituality of Moderation

AbstractThe churches in Indonesia have been struggling to address the problems of poverty, injustice, radicalism, and ecological destruction. They believe that these matters are interlinked with and rooted in human greed, which threatens the unity of the nation. It is a problem of spirituality. The churches are committed to promoting spiritualitas keugaharian, or the “spirituality of moderation.” Only the love of Christ can move and change the hearts of people: from self‐centredness to care for others; from the tendency to accumulate power and wealth to restraint and sharing of resources; from hatred to reconciliation; from disintegration to unity for justice and peace for all creation.

Transformation, Mission, Reconciliation, and Unity

AbstractThis article argues that for Christ’s love to be reflected in the Christian call to mission, it should be seen from the perspective of the cross: self‐emptying and selfless love that seeks the good of the other just as the self. It argues that mission is critical for transformation, unity, and reconciliation. There cannot be full realization of unity and of reconciliation without the cross. Mission starts from within before it can reach out to others if it is to bring about human dignity and transformation. Christian mission has been on a pilgrimage of love, justice, peace, and unity for decades. The self‐emptying and a selfless love of the cross is a love that sees the other through the self and brings humanity close to reconciliation, love, and unity. Because the church has been searching for reconciliation and unity for many decades, history shows that there cannot be reconciliation – at least for Christianity – without reference to the cross. At the cross, the love of Christ, the love of God, was shared. This was a love that saw need in the other and was willing to reach from deep within the self out and share this love and bring reconciliation and unity to humanity. The cross symbolizes a love so deep it was willing to die so that the other could have life in full. It was a love that saw the other as equally important and needed to be reconciled.

Individual representations of love and their social and cultural resources

Abstract Many scholars consider love to be a complex phenomenon with multiple social, cultural and biological dimensions and contexts. The aim of this study was to examine individual representations of love among young people in emerging adulthood and the sources they are derived from. The survey completed by a sample of 397 young people aged 18–29 showed that all the representations of love can be structured into five factors of love: 1. strength and positive benefits of love, 2. physical love, commitment, searching and building, 3. biological and self-centred love, 4. the reverse side of love, and 5. spiritual love. Respondents were grouped into three profiles: 1. Strong, self-beneficial and relational love, 2. More explicit strong, self-beneficial and relational love, 3. Complex love. The general cultural resources for these factors and love profiles are Christian love and interpretations of socialised romantic love and their deconstructions.

KAUM AWAM SEBAGAI “GARAM DAN TERANG DUNIA” DI ZAMAN TEKNOLOGI DIGITAL

The Industrial Revolution 4.0 changed the work system, mindset and face of the world. In an era that is no longer the same, digital technology is growing rapidly. This change presents a new challenge for the Catholic Church in its existence in the midst of the world. The Church recognizes this change and seeks to use technological advances as a means of proclaiming God's love. In this case, the Church tries to invite Catholic laity to rise up and answer the call of Christ. The laity are the ones who are called. Since receiving baptism they have all been called to be salt and light to their fellowmen. Yet the laity often mistake that they have the lower dignity of the priests and are not worthy to be preachers of Christ. The Catholic Church tries to make people realize that they have the same dignity as children of God. They are also called people. They are a mirror image of the face of Christ in the midst of the world. Their presence in direct contact with the world is the hope that the love of Christ will be felt by all nations. In this era of industrial revolution 4.0, common people are expected to become salt and light for others. The methodology I use in this paper is data collection by means of questionnaires and literature study of various books and articles related to the title of this research. The findings in this paper are that Catholic laypeople are still less aware of their role as salt and light especially in the era of the 4.0 industrial revolution. Therefore the Catholic Church must do more to raise up the laity in answering the call of Jesus Christ as the salt and light of the world.