Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman
By Susan Francois, CSJP
“Good morn or evening friends,” sings Stevie Wonder on the first track of his 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life, “here’s your friendly announcer. I have serious news to pass on to everybody.”
The news in question is embodied in the very title of this soulful R&B ballad, namely that “Love’s in Need of Love Today.” Fifty years later, the message still rings true, perhaps even more urgently amidst the polarizing, dehumanizing, and death-dealing actions taking root in communities across the globe.
“The force of evil plans / to make you its possession / and it will if we let it / destroy everybody / we all must take / precautionary measures / if love and peace you treasure / then you’ll hear me when I say / Oh that love’s in need of love today / Don’t delay, send yours in right away”
We might be forgiven if we feel overwhelmed by the forces of evil rapidly spreading in our midst. “The moral corruption of our limitations as created beings — namely the evil that clearly agitates the human heart — ruins society and life, at times reaching extreme forms of inhumanity,” writes Pope Leo XIV in Magnifica Humanitas. “Yet even these painful expressions of our limitations leave openings for the good (121).”
Our Constitutions challenge us to “engage in the struggle against the reality of evil” (2). This call is so central to our charism that it is the subject of the second paragraph of our Constitutions. In the first paragraph we name God’s gift of peace; in the second paragraph we claim the task of “establishing God’s reign of justice and peace.”
The reality of evil is no joke. It is not to be dismissed, ignored, or downplayed. “The construction of a world in a state of perpetual conflict is an evil and must be named for what it is,” writes Pope Leo. “This way of portraying our current situation may seem bleak or pessimistic, yet I consider it necessary to do so” (210).
Evil cannot have the last word, however. Rather, the reality of evil compels us to respond by doubling down on love. In the words of Mother Francis Clare: “Force was no longer to be the rule, except, indeed, the force of love” (Book of the Blessed Ones, 1874).
Love itself requires our attention and care in times such as these. Reflecting in a 2015 Wall Street Journal interview decades after he recorded his ode to love, Stevie Wonder observed: “The concept I had in mind was that for love to be effective, it has to be fed. Love by itself is hollow.” How do we nurture love?
Right-relationship is central to the power and possibility of love to overcome evil. This is because, as feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether asserts in her seminal work Sexism and God-Talk, “there is no evil that is not relational.” According to Ruether, it is within the context of relationship, between God, self, and other, that sin exists as a “distortion of reality.” We are called to loving actions in our daily lives which heal distorted relationships and have ripple effects beyond measure.
While Pope Leo does not reference any feminist theologians in his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas resonates with the central insights of feminist theology, such as care, connection, mutuality, and relationship. He mentions the word love 66 times in his encyclical on the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.
Leo asserts that “love itself in relationship, expressed in the mutual gift of self and in sharing with the world” as revealed in our Trinitarian God is the “very heart of our faith” (48). At its essence, then, love is rooted in relationship—our relationships with one another and all of creation. Human love mirrors the loving relationship of mutuality between the three divine persons. “The dignity inscribed in each of us by the Holy Spirit can also be seen in our capacity to reflect critically, choose and love freely, and form authentic relationships” (233).
One way that we are called to be yeast and bear hope in times such as these is by choosing to love in big and small ways, always and anyway. “The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture,” Pope Leo tells us, “but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization.”
Indeed, love is in need of love today. Send yours in right away. Don’t delay.
This article appeared in the Autumn 2026 issue of Living Peace.