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September 27, 2018You can’t believe in Jesus and not love life
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life’” (Jn 14,6).
“I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (Jn 11, 25-26).
“I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn 10,10).
Human life, the topic of this column, is the divine gift of our existence as the image of God in the world. We should be shouting this truth from the rooftops as what it is, a clear sign of divine infinite love, and therefore, good.
Every human life is sacred and is never to be broken, infringed or dishonored in any way. The dignity of every person, a consequence of each one of us being the image of God, must be defended. Any threat to human dignity and life must affect each one of us in a profound way. We need to always proclaim the Good News of the sacredness of life everywhere a heart beats.
While every life is in the hands of God, we are called to collaborate with the Lord in protecting every human life. God did not create death nor was it part of the original plan. Romans 5, 12 reminds us that, “Therefore, just as through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned.” God is life and sin is death.
Our God is love and life and these two, love and life, are eternally bound together in God. Any separation of these two is not of God but of sin, the willful and deliberate rejection of God, his laws and his will. Life is so important to God that he has given us a commandment prohibiting us from killing. Saint John Paul II, in his encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” paragraph 41, speaks to us about the core message of this Fifth Commandment:
“…the deepest element of God's commandment to protect human life is the requirement to show reverence and love for every person and the life of every person. This is the teaching that the Apostle Paul, echoing the words of Jesus, addresses to the Christians in Rome: ‘The commandments, you shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet, and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying, namely ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”
The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil, a grave act of disobedience to God and always immoral. To say “no” to murder, abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty, is a firm “yes” to God, the author of every life.
So definite is God’s stance on life that the Vatican recently made an improvement in one of the paragraphs of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here is the new version of paragraph 2267 on the death penalty that will be inserted in all upcoming editions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
“2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”
Brothers and sisters, life comes from God; it is good, and is beautiful even when it is weak, infirmed or has lost its way. May we defend it and love it always. Amen.