To Have Life

With our pastor gone to Boston for a conference on stewardship, my parish had for its celebrant of the Mass Fr. Neil Wilkinson, SJ, one of the priest who services another parish in Mankato. He is also involved with Rachel's Vineyard.

His homily on this Respect Life Sunday has a central theme: Violence is not the answer. Touching base with basic Catholic teaching on abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and embryonic stem-cell research, he noted throughout a solution which promoted the destruction of life is not a good solution. He encourage us to speak the truth in love and to help those with who have experienced these traumas with compassion.

With October focused on the rosary (the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is October 7), it is time to renew our spiritual energy on praying for the cherishing of life from conception to natural death and on our dignity as a creature created "in the image and likeness" of God.

O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life. Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy. Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time. Obtain for them the grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new, the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely, in order to build, together with all people of good will, the civilization of truth and love, to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and lover of life.

Evangelium Vitae
John Paul II