Monday, October 7, 2019

Faith is the power to stand up for life


          I am indebted to the USCCB Respect Life committee for their excellent scriptural reflection for Respect Life Sunday.  I have only slightly edited their words to make it flow as a homily.  It otherwise expresses deftly and plainly the reality we face as a pro-life people and the gifts of faith and hope that we need to persevere in proclaiming the Gospel of Life.

Homily: 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Brothers and sisters, in the first reading today we hear the voice of the prophet Habakkuk crying out to God in anguish: “How long, O Lord? I cry for help but you do not listen!”  How often do we feel that God does not hear our pleas for help?  How often do we fear that our prayers will not be answered in the manner that we desire?  The voice again cries out: “I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.”
I imagine that each of us can relate all-too-well to this feeling today.  When we watch the news or scroll through social media, we are inundated by stories of violence against human life.  The tone of public debate and discourse disrespects the dignity of the human person.  We can often feel that misery surrounds us as abortion, assisted suicide, the death penalty, and other affronts to the dignity of the person find wide public support.
But God, as he responded to Habakkuk, responds to us with a message of hope.  We are assured that the Lord, “will not disappoint.”  And that, “the just one, because of his faith, shall live.”  While God does not promise to answer our prayers on our schedule or according to our plans, we know that He does not abandon us.  While suffering is indeed a part of our earthly life, nonetheless our destiny is to share eternal life with Christ, and this reading reminds us of this today.
In his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae (which translates to “The Gospel of Life”), Pope Saint John Paul II wrote that, “the Gospel of life is not for believers alone: it is for everyone.”  Although faith allows us to more deeply understand the sacred value of human life, the light of reason naturally endows the human conscience with the ability to recognize the dignity of each and every person, and so why does it seem that so many are ignorant of this truth?
In the responsorial psalm, we replied: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”  It seems that many in our world have indeed hardened their hearts to the truth.  They are unable to see the humanity of the child growing in his/her mother’s womb.  They incorrectly believe that a person’s value is determined by his/her abilities (or by a potential to avoid suffering in this world).  They fail to comprehend that one’s worth is not dependent on one’s age or circumstance.  And perhaps, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll see that we’ve allowed our own hearts to be hardened to the attacks against human life.  Maybe we’ve allowed the pain of loss to make our hearts numb, too.
Therefore, in a world that seems to have lost sight of the value of human life, we must pray that those whose hearts have been hardened would hear the voice of God and come to see the invaluable dignity of every person they meet.  And we must pray that our own hearts would be pierced by the suffering of the most vulnerable among us. ///
Because the world in which we live is so often hostile to the Truth, proclaiming the Gospel of Life can be difficult.  In many arenas, defense of infants’ lives, the lives of those disabled or dying, or the lives of any vulnerable human population is met with resistance.  Proclaiming the Church’s teaching on topics like abortion, assisted suicide, and the death penalty can provoke challenging and emotional responses from those who disagree.  Sometimes we may find ourselves afraid to speak up about these issues in our families, among our coworkers, or with students in our school community.  We may fear disagreement, judgement, confrontation, or misunderstanding.  But in the second reading, Saint Paul tells us that, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice.”  Rather, God has given us a spirit of “power and love”—and this spirit should cast out all of our fears.
Saint Paul also encourages us “not to be ashamed of our testimony to our Lord.”  He urges us to “bear our share of hardship for the gospel,” and reminds of our “strength that comes from God.”  Through our faith in Jesus Christ, we know that sin and death have been defeated.   We know that our identity can only be found in our Savior.  And we know that the sufferings and persecutions that we endure in our earthly life glorify God; and, thus, that we are given the strength and grace to persevere in hope.
Faith, my brothers and sisters, gives us this ability to hope.  Through it we are empowered to accomplish amazing things (like ripping up deep-rooted trees and casting them into the sea with only a word).  As a gift, however, faith is not something that we can claim as our own: it’s not something that we earn.  Rather, it is only the graciousness of God that provides it to us, for we are “unprofitable servants” who have done only what we have been obliged to do.  The example of the apostles in the Gospel, however, encourages us to ask God Himself to “increase our faith.”  If we struggle to find the courage to speak boldly about human life, we shouldn’t be ashamed: for the apostles—who themselves lived, ate, and prayed with Christ—needed God’s grace to carry out Christ’s saving mission.  Even still, we needn’t be afraid to take hold of the faith that we have been given: for if we have but “faith the size of a mustard seed,” Christ can give us the power to do incredible things in service of the Gospel.
So today, on this Respect Life Sunday, as we recommit ourselves to upholding the teachings of the Church on the inviolability of human life, may we recall that we have merely “done what we were obliged to do” as followers of Christ; and that this is no small thing, because Christ is our hope, in every season of our lives; and He, who is ever faithful to us, will not fail to snatch us from the snares of death and lead us to the victory of eternal life that He has won for us—the eternal life to which all human life is ordered—the eternal life that we experience, even now, here in this Eucharist.
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – October 5th & 6th, 2019
Given at Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish: West Lafayette, IN – October 6th, 2019

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