This past Sunday was "Respect Life Sunday" in our Church. We look at life in all of its forms and, seeing life as a gift from God, and are faced with the challenges and threats that our societies place upon the gift. The first gift of God is the gift of life, which we continue to hold, begins at the moment of conception and continues through our natural life's journey. Even a great nation life ours, though, has brought into law in our generation, a position that is contrary to that wisdom. Pope Francis is always referring to the fact that we live in a "throwaway culture".
Here are the thoughts of Pope Francis to the Pontifical Academy for Life that he gave at the Vatican on September 27th of this year in this regard. I thought they were worth contemplating.
"We are victims of a the throwaway culture ... there is the throwing away of children that we do not want to welcome, with that abortion law that sends them back to their sender and kills them. Today this has become a "normal" thing, a habit that is very bad; it is truly murder. In order to grasp this, perhaps asking ourselves two questions may help: is it right to eliminate, to end a human life to solve a problem? Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem? Abortion is this. In doing so, we deny hope, the hope of the children who bring us the life that makes us go forward."
He also goes on to speak of the elderly, "the elderly who are a bit of "throwaway material" because they are not needed ... But they are the wisdom, they are the roots of the wisdom of our civilization, and this civilization discards them!"
He concludes these thoughts with these words: "This is a path which we cannot take: the throwaway path."
The pain and struggle of the issues are not "black and white" ... but the truth cannot be ignored - life, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death, is a gift from God, is sacred, and deserves the rights and dignity that law can afford.
Food for thought and a call for action.
No comments:
Post a Comment