Respect Life Sunday

The US Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) feels that moral issues related to developing, maintaining and protecting a culture of life is so important that it has set aside this weekend solely for that purpose.

There is no way I can cover all the aspects of this basic human right in a few short minutes here on the altar but I can reinforce and guide you to the fact that we all have a responsibility to learn and understand and follow the teachings of the Church on the moral issues connected with the very value of life itself.

I urge you all to take some time and visit the USCCB website and spend some time reading by topic the Church’s teachings and positions on a wide variety of topics in order to help yourself form a proper moral conscience. We all have the responsibility for forming our moral conscience and the Church the responsibility and authority for informing us on the truth that a moral conscience if based on.

You will find that all the teaching of the Church is not antiquated and irrelevant but instead is fully based on the basic truths of natural law that we all are born with. Our country’s forefathers (representing a wide variety of faith backgrounds or even none at all) knew this natural law well when they wrote right into our US Constitution that “man is endowed with certain inalienable rights, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not individual and non related factors but totally inter-related, not exclusive of each other but interdependent on each other. 

Respecting life is a very broad topic and responsibility that goes to the core of what it means to be a Christian.  I could stand here and preach solely on the topic of abortion for an hour but instead I urge you to pay special attention to the teachings of the Church on the USCCB website pertaining to all aspects of abortion but respecting life encompasses multiple issues.  

I however do not in any way want to minimize the importance and impact of the very painful issue of abortion. The Church’s teaching is very clear on this, and at over 50 million fatalities in our country since its legalization this is the single largest loss of human life at the hands of man in recorded history. Following me today there will be a short talk on one effort that has begun locally to provide a loving outreach as a response to this area of great need. This effort is the result of the efforts of a small group of our own parishioners to focus on helping those who are caught in the web of pain that abortion causes.

The issues relating to respecting life range across a broad spectrum of our lives, and touch us every day in a number of ways.  In just reading the directory of subjects on the US bishops’ website you can see what I mean. The directory has sections with Church teaching on everything from:
•  Abortion•  Assisted Suicide•  Capital Punishment•  Human Cloning•  Contraception•  Disabilities•  Embryo / Fetal Research•  End of Life Issues / Euthanasia•  IVF / Reproductive Technology•  International Issues•  Morning After Pill•  Natural Family Planning•  Partial-Birth Abortion•  Post Abortion Healing•  Roe v. Wade•  RU-486•  Stem Cell Research•  Unborn Victims of Violence Act•  Women and the Culture of Life

Taking a step back and reading over the writings of Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae on the Value and inviolability of Human Life, (there’s a link to that letter form the USCCB site) it becomes obvious that the Church’s clear teaching on all life related issues is rooted not only in scripture but in the natural law itself.
Jesus became man and in that way is intimately connected with human life not just as the Creator and the Eternal Word but in full oneness, and in this way has made life and all issues relating to the value of life of ultimate importance. 

In this way Jesus made our bodies sacred and in their sacredness we are held responsible for caring for them in all ways we can, from our physical to our mental health.  These temples of the Holy Spirit we occupy are our responsibility to treat as God has treated us, with love and care for His creation.  And we do this by being vigilant that whatever we do to and with our bodies as members of the one body of Christ we do to Him.

We are not the authors of life, God is. And thus we need to become keenly aware of the many directions that today’s world (with its   technology and its push toward a-morality) is pulling us away from and teaching us to deny that there is any absolute truth.  The world would prefer that we believe in relative truth defined as what is good for me when it’s good for me by my sole discretion.  We are not the judges of what is morally right for us. We need to listen to His voice in our hearts and understand the teachings of His Church. Then in times of doubt we will be better prepared to make informed decisions.  

Our parish theme this year is “Believe and Be the Body of Christ”.  How we treat our bodies and the bodies of others is how we fulfill His call. In what we decide to do to our bodies, and with our bodies, in what we decide to put into our bodies, or use our bodies for, and how we treat the bodies of others is how we honor the incredible trust we are given by Christ.  How can we “Be” the Body of Christ if we do things to ourselves or to others which damage that relationship?  
 
With all this in mind, what can we do clearly to answer this divine call to respect life, this call to respect the natural law and the basic human rights it protects?  In the book of Genesis God the Father calls down to Cain who had just murdered his brother Abel and says:  “Where is your brother”?  And later asks: “What have you done to your brother?”

Well today God asks us the same questions: Where is your brother?  and What have you done to your brother?

The issue of respecting life in all ways is then two fold: knowing where is your brother. We all know that as we look to our left and to our right we are all brothers and sisters, as we are all children of God. 

And when God asked Cain: “what have you done to your brother?” He clearly is holding Cain responsible for His brother’s welfare just as we responsible for our brother’s welfare no matter what the nationality, gender, age, occupation or religion. 

We all share in the responsibility to care for each other all our lives and across the entire lifeline of our human existence, not just when we decide it is practical or comfortable or convenient or easy, but for each other from conception to natural death.   

So today let’s commit to Becoming and being the Body of Christ by informing ourselves of Church teaching on matters that the world tells us we need no guidance on, to resist the things that the world wants us to believe, such as the irrelevance of morality. Lets also resist the world’s pulling us toward a culture of total independence of will whereby each of us rationalizes right and wrong in our own way regardless of the effect of our decisions have on the Body of Christ, regardless of our brother’s needs.

Let’s focus our life efforts instead on listening to the Church’s moral teaching authority instead of doing our own personal translation of morality.  Let’s focus on understanding and remembering who our brother is, who our sister is, and how Jesus put it so very simply teaching us to treat others as we want to be treated.
Our responsibility to respect life at all stages and in all ways takes us way beyond matters of sexuality and reproduction and technology. These topics are by no means anything less that critical to our salvation, but the breadth of the call to respect all of life takes us to the treatment of the poor and hungry, into matters of preserving all of God’s creation plant and animal, and how we use it, into all matters of peace and social justice, into matters that that effect the health and well being of our brothers and sisters, into all matters pertaining to the gift of human and spiritual life we have all been given as members of the Body of Christ.
 
If we commit ourselves to studying and understanding and following the teachings of the Church (which has that authority to teach directly from Jesus), then when God asks us: “Where is your brother? We will know truly who our brother and our sister is as fellow members of the Body of Christ ...

And when God asks us:  “What have you done to your brother?” We will know that in all cases we have acted as Jesus wills.  Will we then “Be” the Body of Christ and act as He taught us in all ways, at all times ourselves and in our interactions with the world?  Only then will we truly act with love and truly respect life.