In October of each year is observed Respect Life Month in
Catholic parishes across our great nation. This annual observance provides a
special time to focus on the truth and dignity of the human person.
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| Past Supreme Lady Geralyn C. Shelvin and I attend the Youth Rally and Mass for Life at the Verizon Center in 2012 |
Watching television, listening to the radio, reading the
newspaper, and perusing online news magazines will present in a very real way
just how much an increasingly secular society is constantly attempting to
compete with our holiness. Considering that we live in a largely sophisticated
society, sometimes we are left trying to make sense of varying incongruences to
the culture of life, such as, law enforcement officers assaulting unarmed
civilians, a young man walking into a place of worship to kill people during
prayer in South Carolina, a man murdering journalists during a live interview
in Virginia, legalized abortion, and capital punishment.
In our culture, human life is repeatedly under assault. From
the very moment of conception to natural death, life is threatened because our
society has lost the true meaning of humanity, respect and basic human dignity.
We must never lose sight of the fact that Christ became flesh so that we may
come to know God’s beneficent love (1 John 4:9) and to make us “partakers of
the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Saint John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae explains to us that “it is an absolute imperative
to respect, love and promote the life of every brother and sister, in
accordance with the requirements of God’s bountiful love in Jesus Christ” (n.
77).
Each of us was made in the image and likeness of God, and so
we must affirm the intrinsic value of human life and the dignity of every human
being in a way that transforms the culture of secular society. This priority is
not limited to any “particular” human life. Rather, the priority is to affirm
the dignity of “every” human life because every human life has value. Pope Francis reminds us, “All life has inestimable value even the weakest and most
vulnerable, the sick, the old, the unborn and the poor.”
We must remember that
being pro-life encompasses the
serious concerns of extensive hunger, poverty, homelessness, violence, euthanasia,
capital punishment, and the absence of adequate health care. We cannot support
those who promote widespread abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and the
many other ills that destroy the dignity of human life, who at the same time
claim that they are personally opposed to the evils they support or endorse. We
cannot continue to allow those who claim a belief in “choice” to escape the
moral responsibility to “choose life.”
Evangelium Vitae
presents unequivocally that we are “to preach the Gospel of life, to celebrate
it in the Liturgy and in our whole existence, and to serve it with the various
programs and structures which support and promote life” (79). The way we
are—supposed to be—in the communion processional during the Holy Eucharist is
the way we must be in the world every
day. Be encouraged to
overtly participate in programs and initiatives that defend the dignity of
every human life. May we never forget that Jesus came that we may have life,
and have it abundantly (John 10:10). Let us take seriously our moral obligation
to defend human life at every stage and every age from conception to natural
death.
