Father’s Speech on April 27, 1991, in Montevideo, Uruguay
Members of CAUSA-Uruguay, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a great pleasure and honor for me to meet together with you here in Montevideo, the beautiful capital of Uruguay. I wish to thank you for the warm, heartfelt welcome and reception that the Uruguayan people have given me since my arrival.
As CAUSA in Uruguay celebrates its 10th Anniversary, I wish to thank you for your hard work over these past years as great patriots of this country. Given the important role that Uruguay plays in Latin America, especially here in the Southern Cone, it is most gratifying to visit you here.
In this, my first visit to your marvelous country, I am reminded of the first time I travelled to Latin America 26 years ago. Since that time Latin America has continually remained in my thoughts and in my heart. For many years I have felt deep concern for the destiny of this part of the world, particularly the spiritual destiny of the Latin American people.
I do not believe that it was by mere chance that the American continent was unknown to the Western world until the 15th century. I believe this was part of a special providence of God. God prepared this part of the world for the sake of the development and expansion of His Providence.
Many of the first people to cross the Atlantic Ocean to settle in these countries were deeply devoted people, seeking a land where they could freely worship God and bring the message of Christ to the natives of the New World. It was certainly God’s desire that unity and friendship would blossom between the native people of the Americas and the European settlers. The New World of America should have been a model of harmony for all people under God. However, this did not occur as God had hoped. Along with good and devoted people many selfish people came to the New World. They abused the natives and took their wealth. Problems of slavery and racism added to this tragedy.
As a result of this injustice, the foundation of this new culture could not always be blessed by God. This unfortunate beginning developed into a tradition of selfishness and exploitation that remains until today. If Latin America is to show an example of harmony and peace to the world, this trend must be stopped and reversed.
Since the time of the Emancipation from Spain, Latin America has maintained a great vision of unity among its various nations. Simon Bolivar’s idea of the “Patria Grande” and the visionary ideals of other great Latin American Founding Fathers, among them Uruguay’s Jose Artigas, have inspired important efforts toward unity among Latin American nations.
In this regard, I have been working to promote this vision in Latin America through the Association for the Unity of Latin America (AULA), the Professor’s World Peace Academy, and the Summit Council for World Peace.
I feel today more than ever that Latin America is facing serious cultural, economic, and political problems that must be resolved in order to insure a peaceful and prosperous future. In order for this to take place, there must be free inter change of ideas and technology throughout the world in a way that truly benefits those nations on the path to greater development.
To this end CAUSA has made a worldwide contribution in the field of ideas, offering a clear vision of the path that the democratic systems should take based on the solid foundation of moral and ethical values.
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. But despite their great accomplishments, these movements often departed from those which were originally intended. Religious and cultural movements, political parties, and social systems often have shown division, contradiction, and disharmony within themselves, and have even fought one another. Such are clearly not the true objectives of men of faith and good conscience, and we must not bequeath any mistaken tradition to our descendants.
Then what is the direction we must take? What is a correct tradition to bequeath? God originated His ideal of creation with love for the sake of others; He gives and gives, without even remembering that He gave. In this, He is realizing true love.
All people are created so that they can 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; woman for man. Both man and woman are born to love and become husband and wife. By doing so, they become the object of God’s vertical love. This is the very purpose of their existence.
God, who is the origin of true love, wished to give from the Father’s position this absolute and unchanging true love as an inheritance to man. 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. The right to live together with God and the right to share absolute value with God are also bestowed upon man and woman. Parents want to see that their children become more successful than them. In this same principle God created men as His children to have the same value as God Himself. In the ideal world all human beings, centering on God’s true love, will possess true individual ideals and happiness and transmit both of these to their spouses and offspring.
Today’s world, however, is far from the world God intended. Contrary to its original purpose, the world has degraded itself to become a world of hell. To bring this fallen world back to its original 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, or synonymously, the work of recreation.
God’s purpose lies in the restoration of this world as the original ideal family, and beyond that the establishment of the ideal world centering on God’s true love and the thought of True Parents. When we understand the mission of the Messiah as a mission of True Parents to realize God’s love in this world, we are called by God to pursue and accomplish this mission. The mission of the Messiah is thus the cosmic mission that all men of faith are now undertaking.
By Adam and Eve failing to fulfill their responsibility, God lost true children, and mankind failed to possess True Parents. I Thus, the Messiah comes with the awesome task to stand as True Parent, uproot the false root 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 has first to be established. To help fulfill this very purpose I have been called upon by God. For this objective I have dedicated all. I have suffered persecution and confronted death with only one purpose in mind, so that I can live with the heart of True Parents to love races of all colors in the world more than my own parents who gave birth to me, or my own brothers and sisters.
In this same way, God calls to all human beings to go this same path of the Messiah, loving God and mankind with true, unconditional love, and giving all of oneself for the sake of God’s eternal ideal of love, peace, and harmony. God wishes for each of us to become a Messiah for our fellow man. Each person must love God and his fellow man with the heart of a True Parent. This is the task that God calls every man and woman to fulfill.
The path of true love travels the direct route. It requires no preconditions and nothing can block it. This is the straight path on which we travel only through self-sacrifice. Unless all mankind lives the life of True Parents, world peace will not be realized. All countries, races, cultures, and religions should do more than 100 percent for the sake of each other, and by doing so achieve world peace.
In the current world situation, externally we are experiencing the termination of the Cold War, and peacemaking between East and West, North and South. We are heading toward the age of unification by harmony, as one world family of brothers and sisters. The last decade before the year 2000 is a precious period that God has allowed us for returning to the original world. I have already proposed the establishment of the International Federation for World Peace, and thousands of people in the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries of the world are responding enthusiastically. I have also established the Interreligious Foundation for World Peace, which is actively supported by over 800 of the most important religious leaders in the world.
Many people have devoted themselves to the search for true unity and the achievement of one world; but true world peace still evades us. 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 original mind. Man’s original mind is the most precious gift from God. When a person comes to have the heart of God and True Parents, he can begin to live fully for the sake of others, a life in which he can achieve true peace.
Beginning with this true love, which is the standard of eternal, unchanging value, we should establish not only the unification of mind and body, but we should connect and unite the world presently divided into spiritual and materialistic ideology.
These are concerns of all conscientious people. Accordingly, all men and women of all fields of human endeavor should now tear down the walls of sectarianism and act in accordance with God’s desires for the greater goal of the realization of world peace. Now is the time to develop within each person true love, which is the origin and basic element of world peace.
Anyone who continues to despise others and harbor resentment and antagonism can never contribute to world peace and can render no help in God’s dispensation. Men and women of good conscience and faith, joined together in an allied movement of the eternal God, must practice the true love of True Parentism.
Many people, both young and old, hunger for true love, which is to live for the sake of others. If we can create a new tradition for them, God and mankind united together will march forward to a new world of hope which Jesus Christ also desired, and achieve God’s ideal of creation. Therefore, let us clearly show the world and our youth that a new age of peace, true family, and true mankind has begun.
On the map of the globe, Uruguay clearly takes the shape of the human heart. Your welcome here has shown me that the Uruguayan people are warm and loving. As a small country between the two giant nations of Argentina and Brazil, Uruguay is destined to be a shining light for all in the Southern Cone, Latin America, and the world to see. My deepest hope and prayer is that it will be so.