Respect for Life

October is Respect for Life month and with the closing of the month and the beginning of November, I would like to reflect on what we just celebrated. On New Year’s Day, 2000, the first day of the new millennium, the St. Cloud Times printed some greeting cards for the first baby of the New Year created by third-graders at Sts. Peter, Paul and Michael Primary School in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Their kind words, good wishes, and helpful advice reflect the interests and concerns of people their own age.

For example: “Dear Baby of 2000, I hope you like living on earth because it is cool and you will experience these things: People,

moms and dads, Jesus and God, food, life, seasons, candy, friends, sports, toys, godmothers and godfathers, love and care for you on earth.” Here is what makes our human life in this world possible; our enjoyment of family and friends and good things: “Welcome!” This is the welcome we receive from parents who lovingly accept God’s gift of children. That human welcome echoes God’s own welcome during our human lives.

Yet, we know that every year in our country, tens-of-thousands of babies are deprived of that welcome into life through abortion, the cruelest refusal to welcome God’s gift of new life into our world. It’s not as if there were no adoptive families or material resources for all these children, because there are. The lack of room - the lack of love - is in human hearts - in unwelcoming hearts - in hearts made small and shriveled by a society that exalts selfishness above selfsacrifice.

It is personal selfishness and national selfishness that leads to the kind of injustice, greed, luxury, and pleasure that St. James condemned in his writings. And when you have such injustice, murder is close at hand - murder of the unborn - potential murder of the dying and the vulnerable - murder of the best instincts in our human nature.

If law and medicine can authorize the killing of the unborn child, then what logic can forbid law or medicine from destroying life at any other point in its development? Destruction of the life of incurable people in mental institutions, of the chronically or terminally ill, of the elderly, and many others, who may be regarded as a burden on society, becomes a terrifying possibility. For we live in a time and in a society where those who are unwelcome are in danger of death.

The Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, is our only hope to empower us to respect, cherish, and defend all human life, from conception to natural death. “Come, Holy Spirit, fill our hearts and create in them the self giving way of living that can renew our respect for life.” Help us to say to all life, "Welcome!"

The four most important words said at Mass everyday are, “This is My Body.” The four words that abortion advocates use are, “This is My Body.” Scary, isn't it? Something to think about…...

Always remember how much God loves you!

Fr. Al Backmann