Nova Rerum – The Value of Our Lives in New Times
Nova Rerum – The Value of Our Lives in New Times. A spiritual and social reflection for a world that remembers everything, except what truly matters
We live in a time of noise.
A time of acceleration, consumption, control.
A time of platforms and performances, rights without duties, choices without commitments.
A time where the individual is central, yet the human person is lost.
We chase wellness, success, freedom.
But many of us live with:
- homes, but no sense of home
- noise, but no listening
- productivity, but no presence
We have more than ever — and feel emptier than ever.
So perhaps we need to begin not with critique, but with a question:
What is the true value of a human life today?
What is work, care, love, creation — really worth?
What remains, when everything else is optional?
🌄 Nova Rerum – A New Dawn in Old Words
In 1891, Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”) —
a groundbreaking encyclical on the condition of the working class in an industrialising world.
It was not a political text.
It was a moral awakening.
An attempt to restore human dignity where the human being had become a tool — a cost, a function, a gear in the economic machine.
The Church did not side with capital or with revolution,
but with the face of the worker.
It recognised:
To restore society, we must first restore the human person.
Today, we live in a new kind of industrial age —
digital, fragmented, globalised.
And again, the human face is disappearing —
behind screens, statistics, systems, and spectacles.
This is why we need a Nova Rerum:
not to replace Rerum Novarum,
but to let its spirit breathe anew in a world that is forgetting itself.
🧭 Eight Reflections for a Forgotten Society
This new reflection, Nova Rerum, unfolds in eight movements —
each a mirror, a soft confrontation, a moral reawakening.
1. On the Value of Life
When everything is measured, what cannot be counted disappears.
We have confused living with owning, being with having.
But life is not a commodity — it is a gift.
2. Where Work Becomes Dignity
Labour must not crush the soul.
Work is meant to create, not deplete.
Real dignity lies not in your contract, but in being recognised — seen, valued, held.
3. The Youth as Mirror of the Conscience
Young people are not rebels.
They are seekers.
If their protests are loud, it is because no one has taught them to whisper hope.
They do not need mobilisation — they need formation.
4. When Ease Replaces Meaning
We have many rights, and few responsibilities.
We want success, but flee commitment.
Yet true happiness is not ease — it is fidelity, sacrifice, rootedness.
Possession is not identity. Having is not being.
5. Creation as a Moral Mirror
Ecology is not activism.
It is reverence.
We have poisoned the soil, the animals, the oceans — not because we hate them, but because we are absent.
Integral ecology begins with presence.
6. The Silenced Victims
The voiceless suffer:
animals bred only to die,
children robbed of affection,
caregivers burning out unseen.
The world is full of hidden crucifixions —
and unless we see them, we will never see Christ.
7. When Love Collides with the System
We celebrate self-care — yet neglect the ones who care for others.
We glorify autonomy — and forget that no one lives alone.
We beautify our bodies — while destroying the body of the earth.
This is not freedom. It is abandonment.
8. Faithfulness in a Time of Convenience
Fidelity is not bondage — it is belonging.
In a culture where everything is fluid, fleeting, optional,
fidelity is a prophetic act.
To remain — when you could leave — is the deepest form of love.
✝️ Ecce Homo – See There the Human
The final word is not strategy, ideology, or guilt.
It is presence.
A God who remains faithful,
even when we forget.
A Cross that is not erased,
but inhabited.
The Christian God does not abolish suffering.
He enters it.
And fills it with Presence.
And so Nova Rerum ends — not with noise, but with a gaze:
towards the human person.
Wounded. Searching. Loved.
Capable again of becoming a reflection of the divine.
🕊️ An Invitation
This is not a campaign.
It is a conversion of gaze.
From self to other.
From noise to meaning.
From ease to love.
From comfort to conscience.
From control,
to presence.
Nova Rerum
A new dawn —
not of new things,
but of eternal truths
remembered in a time that forgets.
🌄 What is Nova Rerum – in light of Rerum Novarum?
In 1891, Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”) marked the beginning of Catholic social teaching.
Pope Leo XIII addressed the suffering of workers during the Industrial Revolution, defending the dignity of the human person, the rights to fair labour, private property, and the duty of solidarity.
It was a prophetic response to a world where progress had outpaced morality,
and where the poor were becoming invisible.
Nova Rerum (“New Things [again]”) is not a replacement — but a renewal.
Today, we face new injustices:
- algorithmic labour,
- ecological destruction,
- loneliness in a hyperconnected world,
- the worship of autonomy over community.
Like Leo XIII, Nova Rerum asks again:
What is truly new — and what is truly eternal?
What does it mean to be human in an age of forgetting?
It is not a doctrine.
It is a call to conscience.
To see again.
To care again.
To belong again.
In the spirit of Christ,
who looked at the wounded we say:
Ecce Homo — Behold the human being.
And life still says it to us.
Amen.
Blessings,
Empress
Blessings
Amen
🙏🏼 Maria