A Life Devoted to Others

April 27, 1991

National Theater, Montevideo, Uruguay

Welcoming Assembly for Rev. Sun Myung Moon at the

Tenth Anniversary of CAUSA

Respected guests, members of CAUSA Uruguay, ladies and gentlemen: I am most honored to be with you here in Montevideo, your beautiful capital of Uruguay. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the citizens of Uruguay who have so warmly welcomed me, especially to those who prepared such a wonderful occasion today.

I would also like to congratulate you who have devoted yourselves to your homeland Uruguay for ten years now, culminating in this celebration of the tenth anniversary of the foundation of CAUSA Uruguay. Personally, I am so moved that I could visit this country that is located at the center of South America and that plays such an important role among the countries of Latin America.

Technological standardization for the construction of a great world

This is the first time for me to visit your beautiful country, although I made a tour of various nations in South America twenty-six years ago. Since then, I have never forgotten Latin America, and I have worried about the future of this region for years. I have been deeply concerned in particular about the spiritual salvation of the people of Latin America.

We are now on the threshold of the five hundredth anniversary of the European discovery of the Americas, and we are at an historic and pivotal point where we have to think seriously about the origin of this continent’s culture, our present reality and our future.

I believe it is not by chance, but as a result of God’s providence, that the Americas remained unknown to Europeans until the end of the fifteenth century. God had prepared these continents for a role in His providence.

Many of the first Europeans to cross the Atlantic Ocean and settle in the New World were deeply devoted people, seeking a land where they could freely worship God and bring the message of Christ to the native peoples of the New World. It was certainly God’s desire that unity and friendship would blossom between the native peoples of the Americas and the European settlers.

The New World of America was supposed to have been a model of harmony under God for all people. However, this did not take place as God had hoped. Along with good people of devotion, many selfish people came to the New World. They abused the natives and took their wealth. Problems of slavery and racism added to these woes. As a result, God could not always bless the foundation of this new culture. In some cases, nations were established based on greed rather than on the model of Christian love. This unfortunate beginning developed into a tradition of selfishness and exploitation that remains to this day.

If Latin America wishes to be an example of reconciliation and peace in front of the world, it needs to abandon the customs of the past and make a new start. Since the day of its liberation from Spain and the other colonial powers, Latin America has nurtured a great dream of unity as a neighborhood of countries.

Simon Bolivar, with his idea of Patria Grande, Jose Artigas, who brought about the independence of Uruguay, and other Latin American patriots, all envisioned the unity of Latin America. Today all nations of the world are seeking greater unity through cultural, economic and political endeavors. It is clear that the vision of one world, with the Latin American dream as a precursor, is shining with ever greater luster.

Sharing this vision, I have supported and promoted Latin America’s dream through organizations such as CAUSA, AULA, PWPA and the Global Summit. Through these organizations, for several years I have called many former presidents and prime ministers together. We have studied how to promote the cooperation and unity of all countries. It was for just this purpose that the former presidents of fourteen countries in Latin America met together under the auspices of AULA here in Montevideo in 1986.

Your homeland Latin America still has serious cultural, economic and political problems. Your effort to resolve them is required in order to build a peaceful and abundant future. Latin American countries have the same responsibility in the task of reforming this world as the various developed countries. For the establishment of the ideal world, distribution of technology and free exchange of ideas need to be extended to all nations.

The we are working for more rapid worldwide development in places such as China, Africa, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and your homeland, Latin America.

If Latin America is to show an example of harmony and peace to the world, the trend toward division and conflict has to be stopped and reversed. To this end, CAUSA is making a worldwide contribution in the field of ideas, offering a clear vision of the path that democratic systems have to take based on a solid foundation of moral and ethical values. CAUSA presents a moral perspective that can serve as the foundation to eliminate corruption and exploitation in democratic society.

These serious problems and others that face all humanity, such as ignorance, hunger and disease are products of deeper, underlying spiritual causes that need to be addressed urgently by responsible citizens everywhere. In this time of grave importance, we live in a moment of transition in human history. In the past, many movements in the fields of religion, culture and politics were founded upon noble ideals in pursuit of a better world. Despite great accomplishments, the movements and the institutions they established often departed from their originally intended ideals. Religious and cultural movements, political parties and social systems often fall into division, contradiction and disharmony within themselves, and even fight with one another.

In the world today, wrongful political and religious zeal and narrow mindedness still induce antagonism and hatred. Such are clearly not the desired objectives of people of faith and good conscience, and we must not bequeath such mistaken traditions to our descendants. Then what is the direction we ought to take? What is the proper tradition to bequeath?

God’s ideal of creation begins from the family

In order for us to understand more about the direction humanity has to take to achieve harmony and peace, it is first necessary to understand God’s ideal for the creation.

For God, who is absolute and eternal, why was creation necessary? What could it have been that God absolutely needed? Was it material goods, knowledge or power? These are available to God anytime, and as He wants to, He can manage them. True love alone is what God cannot create by Himself. This is because true love can be achieved only with a reciprocal partner. Without a counterpart, even God cannot realize love. This is the very reason God needed the world of creation.

Then what is true love? As we know, Jesus Christ sacrificed his life to love his enemies. This is true love, which is the love you give to others even if you have to sacrifice your life, a love you give without any thought of reward. Therefore, only through true love, like that of Jesus Christ, can we obtain eternal life and eventually become citizens of the heavenly kingdom.

As we observe the creation, the mineral, plant and animal worlds, we see that all things are created to participate in relationships of subject partner and object partner pairs that can respond to each other in harmony, centering on love. Likewise there is a harmonious love between a husband and wife for each other and for their children. Such relationships are found on each level of the creation.

Humankind is the center of all things, created to be on the highest level, the closest to God. We are the partners of God’s love. Thus men and women are the object partners of God’s true love, and without them, God’s goal of true love cannot be accomplished. God established true love, which is the ideal for the creation, as the highest and absolute value.

Even the absolute God likes to surrender absolutely to true love. Since even God is this way, all people and all things are drawn to true love. From this perspective, we can readily see how high a value each person has, as God’s own object partner of true love. God initiated the ideal of creation with love for the sake of others. He gives and gives, without keeping any tally. In this way, God realizes true love. God began creation investing without limit. Likewise, all people are created to harmonize, exist and live eternally through God’s principle of investing for the sake of others. Man came into being for the sake of woman, as did woman for man.

In God’s ideal for the creation, which is giving true love, both man and woman are born to love and become husband and wife. By doing so, they become the object partner of God’s vertical love. This is the very purpose of their existence. God, who is the origin of true love and the parent of humankind, wished to give this absolute and unchanging true love as an inheritance to human beings. Since in true love perfect harmony and unity are realized, God’s true love can be perfectly bequeathed to His children, who are His partners. Not only that, because of the attributes of true love, God also bestows upon man and woman the right to live together with Him and the right to share absolute value with Him.

Parents want to see their children become more successful and better than they are. We also know that before they marry, all men and women seek a spouse who is better than themselves. By this same principle, God created human beings as His children and gave His blessing to them to become better than God Himself! This is true love. From this perspective, God made human beings to live with Him as His children and to have the same value as God Himself.

Furthermore, God made human beings, centering on His true love, to be able to share their inheritance among themselves, live together and have equal value. Thus in the ideal world all human beings, centering on God’s true love, would possess true individual ideals and happiness and would transmit these to their spouse and offspring. This was the world of God’s originally intended ideal.

Why we need to seek True Parents

Today’s world, however, is far from the world God intended. Contrary to its original purpose, the world has degenerated into a world of hell, full of sin, struggle and pain. In religious terms, this sick, broken human world is called the fallen world. To bring this fallen world to its originally planned condition and order, God wages a dispensation for salvation. Thus I have been teaching that God’s work of salvation is the work of restoration, which is synonymous with the work of re-creation.

God’s purpose lies in the transformation of this world into the original ideal family, and beyond that to the establishment of the ideal world. This centers on God’s true love and the worldview of true parentship. When we understand the mission of the Messiah as a mission of true parents to realize God’s love in this world, we understand that we too are called by God to pursue and accomplish this mission. The mission of the Messiah is thus the cosmic mission that all men and women of faith ought to undertake.

As described in the Bible, Adam and Eve, the first son and daughter of God, were to grow in God’s true love and receive the Blessing of marriage and give birth to sinless children. Thus they, like God, would have become True Parents and could enter heaven. In this way, the world was to become the world of heaven on earth, where God’s ideal family was to expand to realize a world where only God would reign.

However Adam and Eve engaged in illicit love before becoming mature. The archangel became Satan. Adam and Eve became evil ancestors and the world of spiritual death began. The world has become one where people spring from an evil lineage. Satan became the god of licentiousness, and God hates licentiousness the most. Because of licentiousness, the America and Europe of today face the fate that befell Sodom and Gomorrah and Rome. The world needs to find the True Parent who can liberate all people from Satan’s love, life and lineage. This person is the Messiah.

By Adam and Eve failing to fulfill their responsibility, God lost His hoped-for true children, and human beings failed to realize their potential as true parents. The Fall caused the loss of the true being who could have realized the true love of God and the ideal of True Parents. Thus the Messiah comes with the awesome task to stand as the True Parent, uproot the false love that was implanted by the human ancestors, who became false parents, and realize the ideal world of creation.

In a family, the relationship among brothers and sisters exists only on the premise of common parents. Thus, before this world can enter into the realm of true love and true family, the True Parents’ position first has to be established. To help fulfill this very purpose, God has called upon me. For this objective I have poured out my entire life.

The people I am deploying worldwide, the projects I have sponsored covering all fields, ecumenical, academic, educational, media, technical, business, financial and so forth, were all envisioned with this one purpose in mind. I have suffered persecution and confronted death throughout my life with only one purpose in mind: to live with the heart of True Parents, loving people of all colors and cultures in the world more than I love my own parents who gave birth to me, or my own brothers and sisters.

God is calling every human being to walk this same path of the Messiah, loving God and all humankind with true, unconditional love and giving all of oneself for the sake of God’s eternal ideal of love, peace and harmony. This path of love is a universal path for all men and women of faith and good conscience to follow. God wishes for each of us to become a messiah for our community. With the heart of a true parent, each person has to love God and his or her community. This is the mission God calls every man and woman to fulfill.

Urgency for the establishment of true values

Presently, we are experiencing the winding down of the Cold War and a new era of peacemaking between East and West, North and South. Overcoming confrontations and divisions, we are heading toward the age of unification through harmony, as one world family of brothers and sisters. The decade leading up to the year 2000 is a precious period that God has allowed us for returning to the originally intended world. It is a golden opportunity.

I have proposed already establishing the Federation for World Peace, and thousands of leaders in the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries are responding enthusiastically. I have also established the Interreligious Federation for World Peace, which is actively supported by more than eight hundred of the most prominent religious leaders in the world.

Many people have devoted themselves to the search for true unity and the achievement of one world, yet true world peace still eludes us. Everyone wants peace. We must first know what is necessary to bring it about. The key lies not in one’s spouse, sons and daughters, neighbors, nation or world; it is within one’s self. It depends on whether one can become a harmonious being, where mind and body have achieved harmony and unity centering on the “original mind.”

A person’s original mind is the most precious gift from God. Even compared to the entire universe, the original mind has more value. When a person becomes a harmonious being centering on the original mind, he or she comes to have the heart of God and True Parents. They can begin to live fully for the sake of others, and consistently lead a life where true love is the center. Such a life is one in which an individual can achieve true peace to enjoy happiness and the unification of the world. Beginning with true love, which is the standard of eternal, unchanging value, we have to establish the unification of mind and body and the interconnectedness and unity of the world, which presently is so divided by worldviews both spiritual and materialistic.

These are concerns of all conscientious people. The role of religion, politics and culture in realizing ultimate world peace is therefore indispensable. Accordingly, all men and women of all fields of human endeavor now need to begin to tear down the walls of sectarianism. We need to prepare to act with unified power in accordance with God’s desires for the greater goal of the realization of world peace.

Now is the time to reflect upon the fact that we have not contributed enough for world peace. Now is the time for each person to develop true love, which is the origin and basic element of world peace.

We all have to come to the point of interacting with each other with true love, knowing that this is the shortest route to attaining world peace. Any one of us who insults or is hostile to our neighbor cannot contribute to world peace or God’s providence.

The world of today is awash with problems. To stop the rush toward corruption and immorality and engrain in people the way of goodness, we need to establish a true sense of values and a corresponding standard of universal morality. We have to call together all people of conscience and deep faith and educate them to be the workers of true love of our eternal God, workers who can practice the true love of God and True Parents. Regardless of age or gender, so many people throughout the world today are starving for true love. In other words, they are waiting for true people to emerge who are able to live for the sake of others.

If we can establish the tradition of true love, all religions will be united, God and all humanity will be united, and our new hope, God’s originally intended ideal of creation, will be fulfilled. Then let us push forward with establishing the ideal world, which Jesus also sought. Let us show the world and our young people that a new age of peace, an age of true families, and an age of the blossoming of true humanity is dawning.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude again to you for so warmly welcoming my family and me. May God bless you, your family and your country, Uruguay!

Thank you very much.