Kneeling on the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium last night, I scanned the massive audience, straining my eyes, and my attention, to focus on individuals among the throng of 60,000 people. What a surreal experience. The hard concrete floor was unforgiving, but 45 minutes quickly disappeared in the faces, the music, and the moment.

Catholics from around the country gathered this week in Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress – a Revival – an intimate gathering of thousands to re-energize our faith. I think it worked. Why was I kneeling? Because that is what one does when he finds himself in the presence of his Creator. But that is a story for another day.

Have you ever taken a moment at a massive sporting event or concert and tried to look at the individuals blended into the sea of colors? Moving my eyes across the cavernous expanse of the stadium, I suddenly felt a strong desire to see each person. There was an incredible variety of shapes, sizes, colors, hair styles, clothing choices, and facial expressions, standing, sitting, walking, and kneeling everywhere around me. I quickly realized that it was physically impossible for me to focus on each individual. How many of the 60,000 people did I actually see? At one point I started to count: 20, 50, 70, at 100, the counting became distracting. Twenty minutes later, I wondered, did I see 500? 1000? 10,000?

At one point during the night, Bishop Robert Barron asked, “What would happen if this crowd of 60,000 people went out and lived their faith fully?” Then he asked, “What if America’s 70 million Catholics suddenly began to live their faith fully?” “It would change our country. It would change the world.”

There could be many definitions of living one’s faith “fully.” Some might suggest that “following the rules” is a good place to start.

Perhaps.

Kneeling among this crowd, seeking the faces of individual human beings, I found myself thinking about their stories, struggles, hopes, dreams, and fears. These things that pervade our common experience as Homo sapiens. Each story as distinct and personal as a fingerprint. Each face, voice, and personality, different at a scale beyond imagining, and yet, sharing so many of the same experiences of existence. Each given by his or her Creator a dignity, a specialness, born of being made in the Imago Dei, the image of God, including the soul accompanying that image.

The last few days have been an exercise in patience as we’ve navigated the frustrations of moving among thousands of people trying to get to their destinations within constricted spaces. Even massive hallways, exhibit halls, meeting rooms, and stadiums, become small and cramped in the shadow of 60,000 people. The size and scale make it easy to lose sight of the individual. The mass of bodies becomes a moving barrier to what it is one wants to do or wherever it is one wants to go. Together and apart, the person disappears into the crowd, blurred into the backdrop. We cannot process such volume, we cannot engage at such scale. It becomes very easy to lump the individual, and his innate God-given dignity, into the amorphous blob of the throng – now simply a barrier.

A barrier to what? To what I want. What I desire. Where I want to go. My plans. Humanity gets in the way and it’s frustrating.

Beginning to see individuals in the crowded stadium, my mind wandered to the other end of our human experience. Each person’s story revolves around his or her relationships with those encountered in life, in how they treat and how they are treated. If the crowd is a barrier, the individual often becomes a means to an end. To a large degree, the great sin of the world is that we use others to fulfill our desires. Directly and indirectly. How well they serve our purposes often dictates our happiness with them, or disappointment in them. We get lost in our own self-regard, often losing sight of the human being before us, as well as his or her particular needs. Ours are so much more important.

What is it to live one’s Catholic faith fully? What is it to live one’s humanity fully? Rather than the rules, Bishop Barron suggests that love is a good place to start. What is love? He quotes Thomas Aquinas: “Willing the good of the other.”

Kneeling there, in a communal silence among 60,000 people, I imagined the faces I couldn’t see, and the human beings behind them. What would happen if we all willed each other’s good in each encounter?

Then, it hit me: what would happen if I willed the good of every person I encountered?

Maybe love can save the world.