“For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice…” (2 Timothy 1:7)
The first two readings today tell us about so much
hardship. The prophet Habakkuk is crying
to out to God because he does not see his provident hand at work in his
life. We sometimes may feel the same way. We are besieged by stress in our work and in
our homes, sickness in our families, and loss of loved ones. We see all around us the violence the prophet
talks about, and we are left asking the same question: “How long will this
endure?” Both the first and second
readings come to the same conclusion: we
must have faith to persevere in this world.
This is why the apostles asked the Lord to increase their faith in the
gospel.
This past Friday, a driver came to pick me up to go do a
television interview. He was a very nice
man, yet for some reason he kept talking about all the bad things happening on
the news. Full disclosure: I try to keep
up with national and international news, but I never watch the 11pm local
news. At the end of my day, I like to
relax, say my night prayers, and fall asleep in a good mood watching SportsCenter. But
this gentleman caught me up to speed on every accident, every shooting, and
every piece of bad news that had taken place in the last week. However, after reeling off all of these
negative events, without me saying a word, he came to the following
conclusion: “You see Father, that’s why
with all these bad things happening in the world…we gotta have faith now more
than ever.” Immediately I thought about
today’s gospel. How else can we confront
all the craziness in the world if it isn’t through faith?
Today the Church celebrates Respect Life Sunday. Contrary to popular secular opinion or what
the New York Times may have to say, the moral tenets that we uphold and pray are
defended on this day are the same as they were before Pope Francis was elected. Through his actions, Pope Francis has proven
to be a great pope that defends life.
And through his words, the Pope had this to say on the day after that
famous interview was released where the secular world thought he was softening
the Church’s stance on abortion (Surprise! he actually strengthened our
resolve): “Every child who, rather than
being born, is condemned unjustly to being aborted, bears the face of Jesus
Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who even before he was born, and then just
after birth, experienced the world's rejection. And every elderly person – I
spoke of children: let us move to the elderly, another point! And every elderly
person, even if he is ill or at the end of his days, bears the face of Christ.
They cannot be discarded, as the “culture of waste” suggests! They cannot be
thrown away!” (Pope Francis to Doctors on 9/20/13)
We do live in a society that likes to discard rather
violently. On this day, we look around
us and see that we are indeed surrounded by what Blessed John Paul II called a
culture of death. It is up to us to
change it into a culture of life. St.
Paul tells Timothy in today’s second reading that God did not give us a spirit
of cowardice. If this is so, and forgive
me for sounding like a broken record, then why are most Catholics such cowards
when it comes to standing up for human life?
Why do we let this culture of death pervade when we can drown out the
screams of death with our prayers? God
always listens to the prayers of his children.
Just one caveat: WE HAVE TO PRAY! Respect Life Sunday isn’t limited to just one
day, but it lasts the entire month just like we celebrate the month of the rosary
during October. We have such a beautiful
instrument of prayer in the holy rosary where we can ask our Blessed Mother to
protect those who are unborn, those who are elderly, those who are immigrants
or undocumented, those who defend marriage, those who defend and work for the
poor. God did not make us cowards. He sent us the spirit of courage to change
the world and to stand up for all human life and of life’s divine values.
Yes, we may get discouraged like the prophet in the first
reading when we see the state of our world,
but I’ve been saying it all year during this Year of Faith, our prayer
must be those of the apostles: “Increase
our faith!” With faith we can indeed
move mountains and remind the world that Life has a name: Jesus Christ.
When the world discovers this Jesus through us, they will abide in His
truth and his love and all these evils will slowly start to disappear if we live
up to the name of Christians. This is our
calling. We are called to be a people
filled with faith who spreads that faith to slowly eradicate this culture of
death that is killing our children, marginalizing the poor and the migrant,
diluting our marriages and our families, and discarding our elderly. As the Pope said last month quite
emphatically: “They cannot be discarded!” My friends, let us work to build up a true
culture of life. Then filled with great
peace we will be able to say the closing words of today’s gospel when God calls
us home: “We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do (Luke 17:10).”
