In our country, and world, we must fight for the meaning of words.

Homily for Respect Life Sunday October 3-4, 2009

This Sunday, our Holy Mother, the Church desires us to look closer at life and our desire that life be respected from natural conception to natural death. We celebrate the gift of life which is given to us by God Himself. Life is wonderful thing, it is indeed something to celebrate. When we think of this Sunday, when we are called to promote life, we too often tend to only think of all the things the Church is against. It is important to know all these things- we are against abortion, we are against in-vitro fertilization, experiments on human embryos, embryonic stem cell research, we are against euthanasia, artificial contraception, the homosexual lifestyle, poverty, abuse and so on; but even more importantly than what we are against is what we are for; and we are for life, human life.
The respect we have for life is throughout the entire life of a person, from conception to natural death. The reason we speak out this weekend and always is because life is being threatened today by ideologies that do not respect all human life. As Catholics, and as human beings, we hold that all human life, no exceptions, all human life from conception to natural death has God given dignity. This concept is simple and direct and underpins our teaching about life. And even more, because Jesus has died for every human person, human life has even more value and more worth; it has been redeemed by a great price, the most precious blood of Christ.
The ideological problem against life that we face in our world is a difficult challenge. Let me frame the problem by referring to article in the Parisian newspaper Le Monde. The article was an interview with a priest name Fr. Marie Dominique Philippe who was one of the foremost philosophy professors in the world (a modern day Thomas Aquinas). The reporter asked father what he thought was the biggest crisis in France. Fr. Philippe said without hesitation that he desired to restore the meaning of words. He explained that in the current situation, not only in France but around the world, people have changed or tampered with the meaning of words to fit their own ideologies, their own agenda. Words then lose their ability to describe reality as it is, not as we think it should be. This is disastrous because change the meaning of words all you want, but reality is still objective. Current ideologies try to image, and even worst create a world that just doesn't exist. Sooner or later the world you have tried to created in your mind will collide with the way things really are and come crashing down. Just look at the ideology of communism in the East; it failed to take account of the way things really are and so it literally fell apart; but not before it cause the suffering and death of untold millions.
I think one of the most glaring examples of this tampering with meaning of words of which Fr. Philippe spoke, is how own modern world has tampered with the meaning of the word "Choice." especially with regards to abortion. The advocates of “choice” claim that a woman has the right to decide what she wants to do with her body; and as a result no one can come between the woman and her personal decision. Sounds right, but it doesn't convey the truth, the true objective reality of the situation.
What we are talking about today is the choice for the life of an unborn child. With modern science, we can now look into the womb of a woman and see the truth of the reality that exists there, the truth that it is a tiny baby growing- the pictures are quite remarkable. The child is a separate person, with individuality and a great potential. Yet, contrary to science and common sense, our laws conclude that an individual, on the basis of freedom of choice, is able to say what is real and what is not real. The Supreme Court ruled that individuals alone can determine what is a person and what is not a person. This is indeed absolutely absurd--"a person is a person no matter how small; a baby is a baby no matter born or unborn- this is an objective fact and is not a matter of choice or opinion. Life begins at conception, this is an objective fact proven by modern science; it is not a matter of choice; and it is not, it is not even a matter of faith; it is a truth knowable by the human reason apart from faith.
As Catholics, we want to tell the world that we defend the right to choose, but only when our right to choose is used correctly; that is, with the objective truth, goodness and beauty of the human person as the primary consideration in the choice. The authentic right to choose, is only true and authentic, is only free, when we use it to choose that which is good, true and beautiful. Another way of saying this is that true freedom of choice is the freedom to choose love, to love the other person who is our true good and who is beautiful because he or she is alive, made in the image and likeness of God.
So The only authentic freedom of choice for the human person is the choice for love; and we can only love when we choose the life of the other before our own. We are only truly free when we freely choose to love by choosing life even if it means laying down our life for the other. We discover here that “choice” is actually what defines the dignity of Man.
To love is to freely choose our friend, to freely choose to live for the other more than for our self! Jesus exemplified this freedom of choice, the freedom to choose to love, by choosing life. Our Lord said in the Gospel of St. John- (15:15-16), “…I have called you friends, ...You did not choose me, I chose you.” I have come in order that you may have life and have it to the full. Jesus freely choose to love us even when we weren’t loveable. So much did he love us that he gave up His life so that we could live. Death is the very thing that he came to destroy, for Jesus is Life itself. By His very nature Jesus who is God is anti-death, anti-contraception; By His nature God can only be pro-life.
Let us think about people we know, famous people, ordinary people, people we love; what would the world be like without them if someone used choice to kill them before they were born? We can even think about our own family- all the what if’s if someone would have chosen against life and cause those we know and love not to be here, how different our world would be without them.
So for us then, we Catholics are anything but anti-Choice. But we human's must use our choice correctly, because it is possible for us to choose wrongly, to choose things knowingly or unknowingly that destroy our freedom and happiness and degrades us. The problem is that modern culture elevates choice” above everything else, including life. And by doing this we are really elevating ourselves--the one who makes the choice, and so we put ourselves as equals with God; we try to create our own reality. Then we, apart from God, begin deciding what is good and what is evil, what is a good choice and what is a bad choice. We then deny that we can make bad Choices, choices which on the surface appear good but which are bad because they go against God’s original design and purpose for life. in the end we end up creating something even worse than communism, we create hell on earth. It will all come crashing down eventually but again not before unimaginable suffering and pain is unleash and untold millions are murdered. This collapse is already beginning to happen with the current population crises in different parts of the world, such seen in Japan and Russia. the ideologies have tried to convince us that we have too many children when in fact we don't have even close to enough to support the elderly and to replace the population in order to survive.
We must always use our freedom of choice to choose the good, the true, the beautiful, to choose authentic love…to choose life, this is what pro-choice really means. Choice is a word we as Catholics do not want to surrender to the modern culture of death who tries to distort the meanings of words to fit it's selfish, materialist, hedonistic, paganistic and even atheistic mentality which can only lead to death.
We, as Catholics, want to tell the world that the choice for love is the greatest act of freedom for the human person. We are only truly free when we freely choose to love by choosing life. We destroy human freedom when we make bad choices such as to kill the child, the mentally or physically disabled, the sick or elderly person.
In our country, and world, we must fight for the meaning of words. Debates occur about the meaning of what is life and what is worthy enough to remain living; let us not be fooled by current ideologies, every human life is a life worthy to be lived. Let us pray that we can restore the meaning of words and the true meaning of life. Let us conform our thinking to the way thing are, the way God has created them to be; in other words, let us take on the mind of Christ who is the Way, the Truth and Life Itself. .
Let us turn to this source of human life, the very source of truth, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Let us at this Holy Mass and every Holy Mass come into more intimate contact with Jesus who is our life by adoring him and offering our life to Him, He who first offered His life for us, so that we might have life and have it more abundantly. I firmly believe that the only way we will end abortion and all crimes against life is when more Catholics with firm faith fall on their knees in reparation before Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, in order to beg Him for the grace of conversion for our country and for all of those who have immersed themselves in the culture of death either by explicit acts or merely by their indifference. Cardinal Canizares Llovera the current prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, who has competence over the way Mass is celebrated throughout the world, reminded us that the is an unbreakable link between the Eucharist and the defense of life. He said, "To live the Eucharist is to enter in communion with Jesus Christ and as consequence with His love. This a communion of life and makes us participate in the life which is Christ. Divine life, eternal life, but at the same time it makes us givers or carriers of love and defenders of life. If we Christians would live all that the Eucharist means, we would be defenders of life in every moment."
Let us turn to our Blessed Mother to help us. Our Lady, Mother of the Holy Eucharist and so Mother of Life itself, and Our Mother, pray for us who have recourse to thee; help us to end the crimes against life in our day and be people of life, people of Love, and so people of the God who is Love the God' who is life. Amen.