Editor’s note: The following is the edited address of Cardinal Francis Leo at the 46th Annual Cardinal’s Dinner Nov. 5.

Good evening and thank you very much. Dear friends, it is wonderful to be with you as we gather in fellowship for the 46th annual Cardinal’s Dinner. I am delighted to see all of you here at a new venue, and in such great numbers, to share some quality time and a delicious meal. In doing so, we naturally strengthen the bonds of friendship and community all the while raising awareness and significant funds for a number of charities which will address the enormous needs — emotional, physical, spiritual and social — of many of our brothers and sisters across the GTA…

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I wish to thank so very sincerely Mrs. Anna Rossetti, who has generously accepted to be this year’s Chair and with you all I extend our gratitude as well to the steadfast Committee in making this event a memorable and congenial one for us. I would be remiss if I did not dutifully recognize the many staff members and volunteers at the archdiocesan Pastoral Centre and across the archdiocese who have contributed countless hours of hard work for the success of this annual and much awaited get-together.

As we enjoy a succulent meal, soothing background music, each other’s company and a glass of vino or two (but not more!) – we are nevertheless conscious that so many of our fellow human beings, our sisters and brothers across the world, including the GTA, are struggling in many ways and have been for a long time now, striving to make ends meet, to just get by, and for some, to survive tragic and devastating realities of everyday life. Without composing an exhaustive list of the varied social ills which afflict our local society, I wish simply to draw our attention to the fact that we all have a role to play, either big or small, in healing our broken world. It is too easy to blame those in power, those who are elected, appointed or chosen to guide, lead, govern and serve. Each one of us needs to embrace his or her responsibility and contribute to patch up the holes of the garment of our common humanity, to mend the torn tapestry of our shared human journey. In doing so we will honour God Himself and effect true, lasting and transforming change.

But where and how do we begin?

Fifty-two years ago, a French philosopher, drama critic and playwright went to his eternal reward. He was a remarkable thinker, social commentator and indeed a man of deep and committed faith. I refer to the Christian existentialist, Gabriel Marcel. I first encountered the depth of his thought during seminary formation. Later while pursuing graduate work in philosophy, I delved deeper into his work as I was finding in his intuitions, much hope and solace for the ailments of our tired, confused and complicated world.

Let us briefly go back in time. The year was 1914, and the French army suffered dreadful losses at the Battle of the Frontiers and the First Battle of the Marne. You can imagine the heart-wrenching inquiries swamping the Red Cross information service in Paris. The newly arrived director there was none other than Gabriel Marcel, at that point a young 24-year-old philosophy graduate. His responsibility was to track down information about soldiers who had gone missing at the front and then relay it to their families. In his autobiography, Marcel wrote of this unnerving task: “For me it was a question, as much as possible, of taking every particular case that was handed to us by an anguished mother, wife, fiancée, or sister and of gathering the necessary evidence that would allow me to shed light upon the disappearance of a soldier.” Truthfully, he worked with the information service for only a brief time. However, that experience remained with him for the rest of his life as he then understood his mission, as a philosopher and social thinker, as a way to respond to those anguished inquirers of life.

You see, thanks to that experience, he developed an understanding of the human condition which is hopeful and life-giving, in my estimation. Back at the army service, he understood that the missing soldier was a “problem” that was solved when he discovered the soldier’s status, his whereabouts. To put it bluntly, the missing soldier became a variable in a formula derived from catalogue data. This was level one, if you will. Level two, deeper and meaningful, was one that necessitated personal encounters. Whenever Marcel had to deliver the horrifying news to the parents that their son had been killed in action, it was manifestly apparent that the soldier was not a variable but a singular human being. 

Marcel is well-known for forging the insightful distinction between problem and mystery, indeed a central building block to his thought. He stated that our broken world is one that is “on the one hand, riddled with problems and, on the other, determined to allow no room for mystery” (Marcel 1995, p. 12).  A problem is something external to us. It can be solved with a technique. In his words: “A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and initial validity” (Marcel 1949, p. 117).

A problem is a question, an issue in which I am not involved, in which the identity of the person asking the question or experiencing the trial and tribulation is not an issue. As such, a problem is something that bars my way, placing an obstacle in front of me that is addressed and overcome impersonally, detachedly by means of the technique. He noted that the modern broken world only sees the problematic insomuch as it can be addressed with a skill set, an algorithm, e.g., changing a flat tire on a car or downloading security software to fix a virus on one’s computer. 

A mystery, on the other hand,  is something which demands participation, personal involvement and from which we cannot extricate ourselves or remain indifferent. Marcel called a mystery a “problem which encroaches upon its own data.” It has roots in the depths of our being, but it also reaches beyond us. There is no general technique for addressing a mystery. It can only be lived out with a wisdom responsive to the particulars of the situation and the people involved. Birth, love and death are central mysteries for Marcel.

He realized that he could have chosen to deal only in techniques and problems at the information service in Paris, that he could have converted “the war into an abstract schema.” He could have acted as a functionary whose sole duty was to research and report information. This might have buffered him from the sorrow of the inquirers, but it would have also contributed to the dehumanizing effects of the war. This is why he tried, in his own words, to “welcome these people who came to me in a rather personal and human way such that they wouldn’t feel as though they were having to deal with some official at a desk or a window.”  Marcel came to see “every index card” as “a heart-rending personal appeal.”

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He “decried the horrific “techniques of degradation” deployed in the concentration camps and the Gulag. He feared that we had more broadly entered an age of “problematic” humanity, where people were treated as “cases” and saw themselves in turn as amalgamations of “functions.” He worried about a tendency throughout late modern culture, from the magazine stand to the doctor’s office to the halls of power, to reduce mysteries to problems: love reduced to a reproductive drive, death reduced to a mere biological endpoint.” 

I mention this distinction because I too fear that, as we go about our days, we may run the risk of reducing all that we see and experience to mere problems and fail to enter into the mystery, refusing to let ourselves be moved, challenged and grow as a result of that exchange, that encounter, and the necessary availability and openness it requires. As I walk about or drive around our city and the GTA, it causes me great grief to see, for instance, those 20-something young men and women, beloved of the Lord, tragically afflicted and deformed due to fentanyl and other drugs, finding themselves in a perpetual state of falling, and in more than one way. Are they mere problems to solve, for whom a solution is to be found or do they qualify as a mystery for me to enter into, a life for me to come to understand, a brother, a sister to encounter, to embrace? That makes all the difference. The refugees and migrants who knock on our doors or sleep out in the cold, on a park bench, on the lawn of a church, in the doorway of a storefront. They are not solvable problems but represent a vital mystery in which I need to let myself be invested so as to bring life, hope and meaning; similarly, for those for those who suffer from mental health, the homeless and the broken families and children living in fear and shame. Embryos are mysteries, not problems, and so are the elderly and those in chronic or serious illness, living with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”; young women lured into and enslaved in human trafficking’s infamous networks; the abused and the ostracized, the unloved and the forgotten, the spiritually confused and those who deliberately live in ignorance, inebriated by ideology, feasting on relativism and endorsing, as it were, the latest societal trends regardless of serious considerations as to morality or objective truth. And then we have our food shortage which is a mysteriously real call to action with 8.7 million Canadians, including 2.1 million children living in households where food is not always available or affordable. In Ontario, food banks handled 7.7 million visits from more than one million residents in 2023–24, with many families depending on them month after month to get by. 

It is a choice we make. How do we see and consider such realities? As problems to fix with a cold, uninvolved, detached, surgical or bureaucratic calculation or as mysteries which call me forth out of my selfishness, my comfort zone, my fears and my coziness, which scream at my humanity, my soul, my faith, my heart? 

On a larger but not less crucial scale, it is not a problem but a mystery to undertake all efforts to control, limit, reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons – this is an urgent moral imperative. It is a mystery which involves us when we consider that nearly 5.4 billion people live in the 62 countries where there are serious religious freedom violations - either persecution or discrimination - taking place. This figure amounts to approximately 65 per cent of the global population. In other words, nearly two out of three people live in a country where religious minorities are persecuted or discriminated against. Another mystery that ought to engage and activate us is the unjust and unpayable debt burdens faced by many impoverished regions. We know that more than 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt payments than on health care or education, therefore hindering sustainable development. And the dreadful wars that are waged out there, in so many regions of our world, they speak to the incapacity of seeing the other as a mystery to honour and to enter into.

We will be able to see these realities and experience these as mysteries only if we have purified our eyes and have put on a new gaze. Last year, for those who were present at the dinner, I addressed the need for authentic community so as to bring about healing in our fractured and polarized world. Part and parcel of true community living is the willingness to listen with the ears of one’s heart. This year, if you permit, I wish to propose the idea of Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart. Here again we note the wisdom of the Apostle Paul who wrote to the Ephesians 1:18: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you.” The fact is, we possess not only physical eyes with which to see the beauty of creation around us and the goodness of those we encounter. We were formed with spiritual eyes as well, able to understand the deeper things of God and of life itself, in all its complexities. If we remain with our spiritual eyes closed, however, we will walk in blindness and will not be able to fulfill our calling in life and live the abundant life. Spiritual blindness is a real thing and leaves us in a sorrowful state. The great doctor of the Church, St. Augustine, understood this idea and, in his inimitable way, voiced in a sermon when he said: “Tota igitur opera nostra, fratres, in hac vita est, sanare oculum cordis, unde videatur Deus.” And I would respectfully add, so we can see the needs of others and our responsibility to them.

It is therefore essential for our eyes to be healed, to keep our spiritual eyes open, to have 20/20 vision with the eyes of our heart. We would do well to heed the Lord’s admonition: “Seeing yet they do not see.”Something more than the use of our natural eyes must take place. Faith and prayer come to our aid for sure, as well as an availability to others, a deep sense of humility and an openness to transcendence, to the Other with a capital O and to others with a small o. 

In his iconic poem, “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot speaks about those individuals who find themselves “shape without form, shade without colour. Paralysed force, gesture without motion” … ‘The eyes are not here – There are no eyes here - In this valley of dying stars - In this hollow valley”. Therein is where we are called to see mystery, to see meaning, to see worth, to see dignity and to become agents of transformation. 

The power to change our world, to move from problem to mystery when we encounter human needs, is already in our hands, before us. Imagine, if you would for an instance, the strength and beauty, the radiance and goodness of a society that chooses charity over condemnation, dialogue over division, humanity over hatred, truth over lies. Imagine the world we could build if we stopped seeing those in trouble and in need as problems to solve and started embracing them as authentic mysteries into which we enter and are present, learning and supporting, seeing with new eyes and loving with a new heart. It takes courage to step out of the echo chambers of our comfort zones. It takes strength to challenge the narratives that reduce others to mere problems. And it takes new eyes, the eyes of the heart, to look at someone who is broken, wounded, battered and living in modern forms of slavery and still recognize their humanity, their inviolable dignity, their beloved-ness, the very image of God in their frailty and woundedness. Every one of us has a role to play in building the world we want to live in, we want to leave behind, indeed the world God so desires - a world that values care, integrity and compassion. We cannot wait for someone else to fix it. And it’s in how we teach our children, how we treat our neighbours, how we engage with those we disagree with most deeply. It’s in how we choose to see, either with ungraced, merely horizonal, one-dimensional, limited, self-absorbed eyes - or rather with the eyes of the soul, the healed eyes, with a gaze of hope and of mercy, of God and of grace, which sees before me a mystery encompassing that brother or sister, a child of the Heavenly Father and an opportunity to transform a life.

The question is: in this Jubilee Holy Year of Hope, how can we as individuals and as communities bring hope to people’s lives, especially to those who are afflicted in so many real and heartbreaking ways? One of the greatest gifts we can give is a renewed sense of hope, a sense of belonging, a sense of a better tomorrow because we ourselves are ready to lend a helping hand, to see with eyes of the soul, with a gaze that shines with hope to those who find themselves in hopelessness and despair. Thanks to Pope Francis first and then Pope Leo XIV, we celebrate this Holy Year in which we are challenged to be providers of hope, tireless cultivators of the seeds of hope, to paraphrase a beautiful prayer, and sharers of dreams with our sisters and brothers. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, of happy memory: “The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.”

I conclude with a story about understanding mystery and seeing with the eyes of the heart and the difference it really makes in people’s lives. 

Many perhaps know of the famous Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska. Fr. Edward J. Flanagan, a Catholic founded Boys Town in 1917. He lived a life defined by faith, compassion and courage. Seeing the needs at hand he established a haven for the poor, orphaned, abused, neglected or at-risk boys. His belief that “there’s no such thing as a bad boy” guided his life’s ministry, even in the face of criticism and threats. He welcomed children of every race, religion and background, standing firm in his mission when few others would. Fr. Flanagan passed away in 1948 and today, more than 100 years later, his legacy of hope and healing for children and families in need continues. His cause for sainthood has been already introduced. 

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Back to the story. “In 1918, a boy named Howard Loomis was abandoned by his mother at Father Flanagan’s Home for Boys, which had opened just a year earlier. Howard had polio and wore heavy leg braces. Walking was difficult for him, especially when he had to go up or down steps. Soon, several of the Home’s older boys were carrying Howard up and down the stairs. One day, Fr. Flanagan asked Reuben Granger, one of those older boys, if carrying Howard was hard. Reuben replied, ‘He ain’t heavy, Father… he’s m’ brother.’”

Thank you for the charity of your attention and the joy of your company.