Every October, the holy Catholic Church in the United States observes Respect Life, with Respect Life Sunday falling on the first Sunday of the month. Respect Life Month has been commemorated every year since 1972, the year before the Supreme Court legalized abortion with the Roe vs Wade decision. This is a time for us to reflect up the sacred gift of human life that is a value of our Catholic faith and to renew our commitment to building a culture that protects and promotes human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.
Our theme this year for this month is “Life: Our Sign of Hope”, which ties into the Jubilee Year of Hope. Our ethic of life in the Catholic faith affirms that every human being bears the image of God and deserves dignity and respect. From the unborn child in his mother’s womb, to the person on death row in prison, from the elderly person in a nursing home or our neighbor who is struggling with mental health issues or poverty or addiction, our Catholic faith proclaims firmly that all human life is sacred. We are to be signs of hope by loving, protecting, and serving human life in different ways. While a lot of the issues covered by our ethic of respecting human life, it is important that we do not see it as just one issue.
In our Gospel message from Luke, the disciples have been following Jesus for some time now, listening to his proclamation of God’s kingdom, seeing him pray and practice his faith, and perform healings and miracles. The disciples ask him: Lord increase our faith. Faith is at the foundation of our life of discipleship as Catholics. This Gospel ties in so well with Respect Life Sunday today, since without faith, we will not be able to see God in creation, we will not be able to proclaim the Gospel of Life or live out these values in our words and our actions. Without faith, it would be easy to be without hope, to just dwell on the dark things we see in this world. Faith gives us a new vision and a new version of life. Faith allows us to have hope. Faith frees us and enables us to see God’s love and mercy at work in our lives, in the lives of others, and in the world.
The prophet Habakkuk looks out at the world and he sees violence, destruction, and misery. We see things like that in the world today. I saw on the news a few days ago that a chef at Brennan’s restaurant in New Orleans was killed in a drive by shooting as he waited in his car to pick up his two year old son from day care. How can we live in a world like that? Habakkuk cries out to the Lord, and at first, it appears that the Lord does not hear his cries. Finally, the Lord answers him with a vision. God tells the prophet that the just one who has faith will live. Like Habukkuk, we place our faith is in the new life Christ gives us here on earth and in the promise of eternal life to come. Like Habukkuk, we can become frustrated with our lives and with what we see in the world. God encourages us to have faith in our thoughts, our words, and our actions. We are to believe that our faith is life saving. The just person perseveres on his journey of faith, in his actions, and his prayers. He trusts in the saving power of God and in the salvation we have in our Jesus Christ.
As you know, I just got back this past week from pilgrimage primarily focused on different shrines linked to apparitions of the Blessed Mother, including Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, Our Lady of Lourdes in France, and Our Lady of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzagovina. In a talk we had with a Franciscan friar in Medjurgoje, he spoke about how the call to go on pilgrimage starts with the grace of God working within us, of a decision that we make out of our faith. Jesus says that we don’t need to start with an enormoous amount of faith, that faith as tiny as a small mustard seed can change the world. All three of these apparitions that we visited appeared to children or youth in the 19th and 20th century who were living in very humble situations, of Mary speaking in an honest and direct message for the whole world. She brought a greeting of peace. She called people to the faith, to bring them closer to her son. It was an amazing pilgrimage experience for me and some of our Holy Savior parishioners. I will share more of that experience in the coming weeks.
I want to close with a prayer for hope written in honor of 2025 Respect Life Sunday.
Heavenly Father, in the sacrament of baptism, you give us the gift of new life. Through your son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, you have made us your own.
Help us to recognize the gift of human life as a sign of hope in the world. Reveal to us the places where your precious gift of life is most in need of protection. Strengthen us to defend life in all stages and circumstances, from the child in the womb, to the elderly and the dying.
Guided by the Holy Spirit, guard us from discouragement and give us the grace to be messengers of hope. May we be filled with confidence that nothing can separate us from your love. AMEN.
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