Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 254
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 6: The Role of Women in Creating the Ideal World
Speech 7: Women Will Play a Leading Role in the Ideal World III, pg 922-925
Women Will Play a Leading Role in the Ideal World III
September 24, 1992 Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan
Women’s Federation for World Peace Japan Conference
(True Mother’s speech)
Respected guests, members of the Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia, ladies and gentlemen: On this occasion, as we approach the Women’s Federation for World Peace seven-city speaking tour, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of you who have helped make this evening a success. On September 17 of last year I came to Tokyo as the principal speaker at the national rally held by the Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia. Since that rally, this organization has received tremendous support in Japan and around the world and has accomplished remarkable growth. On November 20, the first Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia rally was held in Seoul, with fifteen thousand representative Korean women in attendance.
Then, on April 10 of this year, more than one hundred fifty thousand women from seventy-two countries filled the Seoul Olympic Stadium beyond capacity to express their strong desire for world peace. That rally, the largest women’s rally ever held, inaugurated the Women’s Federation for World Peace. I have nothing except the highest words of praise for your strong dedication and hard work in bringing about such remarkable growth in this movement.
Following that international rally, I toured eighty-one cities in Korea and continued my lectures on the topic of “Women’s Role in the Ideal World.” Everywhere I went, people gathered in numbers so large as to resemble the clouds of heaven. In all, I received the welcome and support of more than a million Korean women. The enthusiasm of these women clearly illustrated that women possess an unlimited capacity to contribute to future world peace.
In only eight years we will enter the twenty-first century. We are witnessing the passing of the era of brute force, in which men have held almost exclusive sway. This era has been tainted by war, violence, exploitation and destruction. In the new era we are about to enter, women will have the central role in leading humanity into love, forgiveness, harmony and cooperation. My tour was an opportunity to bring this important realization to the people of Korea.
The original role of women
Women need to come to a new realization of their original, God-given role and become cornerstones for peace, happiness and freedom. The only way for us to build peace in each of our nations and in the world is to build true families, that is, families confirmed in true love.
The International Wedding Ceremony of thirty thousand couples in Seoul on August 25 of this year validated the fact that world peace can be brought into reality through ideal families. This ceremony, held as a part of the first World Culture and Sports Festival, was a historic declaration opening the gate to world peace. It was a giant panorama of love testifying that humanity is one family, and that a kindred tie centering on God’s love unites the world as one.
On that day, my husband and I, in our capacity as the True Parents, gave the Blessing of eternal love to some sixty thousand brides and grooms from one hundred thirty-one countries. At this magnificent festival of love held under the bright sunshine and azure sky, each bride and groom made his or her pledge to establish true families and a world of true peace before God, True Parents and all humanity. The covenants of love formed that day centering on God’s true love are eternal and absolute. Such marriage bonds can never be seen as conditional or limited, because true love seeks to give perpetually. When two people come together in such love, they form an eternal association that no force can sunder. Thus, for these brides and grooms there can never be even the slightest thought of divorce or the corruption of sexual morality—two problems that have become so widespread in today’s society.
Because these people come together in an environment of God’s true love, differences of nationality, race, language and customs do not become obstacles. God’s true love melts down all obstacles, and these husbands and wives will discover in His bosom a common language of true love. They will come together in the common arena of true love. Their unions transcend nations, race and religion. They will grow to become citizens of the future world who will serve and embrace the world. When these people set down their roots of sacrificial true love around the world, the world will be swept clean of all the philosophies of hatred and conflict. There will be an end to the tragedies of war and genocide. There will be only true, ideal families and a true world.
Peace through international marriage
Already, in 1988, my husband and I had built a bridge of eternal peace between Korea and Japan by joining in the Blessing of marriage more than six thousand Korean-Japanese couples. As husbands and wives centered on God’s true love, they formed families that, by virtue of their connection by lineage, have a greater love than anyone for the peoples, traditions and cultures of both countries. Peace in northeast Asia, at least, is now guaranteed forever through these Korean-Japanese couples.
Traditionally, the task of protecting and nurturing the family has been the special right and mission given to women. In our society today, however, there are innumerable fundamental problems that threaten to undermine our families. Certainly the problems faced by the world today cannot be resolved by developing military might or economic power. In contemporary society the amplification of problems of an internal nature, such as the collapse of traditional values and the breakdown of social order, is undermining our external growth and development.
Even now, tens of millions of people on this earth are dying of starvation. Underlying the challenges of adequate production and distribution of food is the more fundamental problem of the dearth of the love by which we would see these suffering people as our own sons and daughters, our own brothers and sisters, our own mothers and fathers. Societies today are increasingly afflicted with crime and drug abuse. It is said that humanity has escaped the threat of nuclear war. Yet, our future appears more shrouded by the clouds of despair than lit up by the sunshine of hope.
Such crises faced by the world today reflect deeper, more fundamental problems, which will not be resolved by fragmentary or superficial means. Any effort to pursue the solutions to such problems solely through human means, while excluding God who has been working His providence in the background of human history, is certain to end in failure.
This is the reason that Rev. Moon teaches Godism, which is also referred to as Head-wing Thought. Despite having had to undergo every imaginable form of suffering, he has opened a new horizon of victory, one that enables humanity to find solutions to the problems of the world. His message is that the gates to a peaceful world will be opened only when humanity recovers its relationship with God and re-establishes original, ideal families. I’m not talking only about the United States; I’m also talking about Russia, which has been controlled by atheistic communism. There, large numbers of young people and intellectuals are studying Head-wing thought, which is opening their eyes to the existence of God and the ideal of a true family.
Whether we are concerned with racial discord, violence, conflict between the rich and the poor, destruction of the environment, or even the selfishness exhibited by countries and peoples, we can begin to work out the solutions to the world’s problems only after we have been trained within the environment of the ideal family in the practice of true love—that is, the love that seeks to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others.
FFWPU, USA