My dear parish family,
As you read this bulletin article this Sunday, I will be with the youth from our parish participating in the annual March for Life in Washington D.C. You will undoubtedly hear very little about the March on T.V. And this very limited coverage is always quite bias. Sadly, last years coverage on the major media networks was nothing more than a travesty.
Sadly this year will probably be no different. You will hear very little about the March. Or the media will cover only the small, very small group of Anti-lifers (they are called by the Media, Pro-Choice or Abortion right proponents, while the pro-lifers are called anti-choice or abortion right opponents. A man being trained to write for a local newspaper told me just the other day that he was instructed to write with this language when referring to the pro-life moment. He was told basically to use negative language when referring to the pro-life movement and positive language when referring to the anti-life movement). In fact, last year one couldn’t find any pro-death supporters. However, even so the media was able (and they really had to look) to find one small group of them (about six of them). Even so, the picture of this small group holding pro-death signs were plastered on the front page of many newspapers and magazines across the country with no accompanying picture of the more than 350, 000 pro-lifers that were marching. Why doesn’t the media have the courage to cover this annual event honestly?
I wish everyone had the opportunity to march in the PRO_LIFE crowd, of mostly young energetic and joyful people. One media outlet said last year that the crowd was made up of mostly people over the age of sixty and that in a couple decades all them will be dead. Another said that what was obviously missing from the “protesters” were young women. While I was there, and any one in our group can tell you, that the majority of the participants where not over 60, but under 30 (and probably under 20). And, there where more teenage girls and young woman than any other demographic group present at the march. Why does the media have to lie? What are they afraid of? LIFE???
It is interesting that during the Civil Rights time in the 60's the media covered "the largest march in history" when Dr. M.L. King spoke his famous speech. It was the biggest media blitz ever. There were only 250,000 there. Yet, at the Pro-Life march on Washington last year over 350,000 people were there but no media cameras and not a word on TV news? One media outlet showed a picture of a sparse crowd taken either way before the march began or after many of the marchers had dispersed.
Please keep our young people in your prayers as they courageously and publically stand up for life. Also watch the coverage on EWTN if you want to get a true picture of this momentous event that takes place every year, and yet is ignored for the most part, or given mere lip service by the media and our government. Eventually, the Pro-life movement will when if not simply by attraction. The pro-deathers are either killing their babies or avoiding them by contracepting; while the pro-lifers are allowing all of their children to live and are remaining open to all the life, the babies, the human persons, that God wishes to bless them with. However, how many souls will be lost in the meantime until the culture of death dies?
We are on the side of life and so we are on the winning team!!! Let us pray and do penance that every single Human person would be defended and protected from conception to natural death. Let us especially spend time before LIFE Himself, Jesus truly present in the Holy Eucharist, begging Him to convert our current culture of death into a culture of life and holiness.
*I want to share with you a response of Cardinal Canizares Llovera when He was ask about the connection between life and Belief, adoration, hope and love for the Holy Eucharist. The Cardinal began by saying, “ There is no doubt about the connection.”
He went on to say, “To recognise what is the Eucharist is to recognise Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Son of God that became man. Christ is the most absolute 'yes' of God to man. He is the revelation of God and the revelation of the truth about man. Man cannot be separated from God; man was created in the image and likeness of God.
In creation, God manifests Himself as love in favour of man. In His Son, the true image of the Father, we have been created in the image of the Son. For that reason, all human beings have a greatness and a dignity that cannot be separated or violated.
Jesus Christ shows the face of God that loves man to the utter extremes. The biggest demonstration of this love of Jesus for Man is seen on the cross, dying for man. But this love could not be destroyed or chained by death. It has triumphed over death. The love of Jesus, Son of God, brought to an extreme on the cross, shows how all men are loved by God with a love from which nothing and no one can separate us. Each man has been saved or repurchased by the blood of Christ, which is the blood of God. This is how much every human being is worth, the blood of God.
For that reason, between the Eucharist and the defence of life there is a link that cannot be separated. To live the Eucharist, is to enter in communion with Jesus Christ and as a consequence with His love. This is 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 be givers or carriers of love and defenders of life.
If the Christians would live all that the Eucharist means, we would be defenders of life in every moment. (My emphasis !!!)
Formerly Archbishop of Toledo, Spain, Cardinal Cañizares is the current Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, that has competence over the way in which Mass is celebrated throughout the world. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI.
No comments:
Post a Comment