Pro-Life Sunday

Here is a copy of my homily from Pro-Life Sunday, Sunday, October 3, 2010, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. An audio clip of the homily is available online here.

AMDG                                                                                                              JMJ

27/OT/C/3/X/10
(Pro-Life)

“For the vision, still has its time,

presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;

if it delays, wait for it

it will surely come, it will not be late.”

The vision . . . God’s holy Word this Sunday morning, from the Prophet Habakkuk.

The vision . . . what is this vision?

From the beginning, our creator had this vision:  to share His life with us, His creatures, life now, life forever.

The vision of the sacredness of life, life now, life forever.

A reign of life, not destruction

A kingdom of life, not extinction

A culture of life, not death.

This vision our creator planted in the depth of every human person, as part of our normative law: that life is sacred; that, once God breathes it into us, it lasts forever; that to take innocent life is so inimical to a righteous society that its protection is mandated in the very middle of the ten commandments; that the more innocent and fragile the more it begs protection; that, indeed, to protect life is the most noble of vocations.

This vision, while enshrined in every great religious creed, whether Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, evangelical, Hindu, Buddhist . . . the list goes on . . . , is at its core not denominational or confessional at all, but human, basic, fundamental, rational, natural law, so much so that it was at the core of the enlightened founding fathers who fashioned on these shores a new “promised land” acknowledging from day one that human beings are endowed with certain basic inalienable rights, and that the first of these is . . . guess what? . . . life.

The sacredness of life, life now, life forever.

The vision is threatened, dulled, eclipsed . . . Habakkuk uses vocabulary such as “violence . . . ruin . . . misery . . . destruction . . . strife . . . discord.”

We today add words such as “war . . . terrorism . . . abortion . . . euthanasia . . . trafficking . . . experimentation on living organisms . . .” and are at times tempted to shout out with the prophet, “How long, O Lord?  I cry for help, but you do not listen!”

And the one who implanted that vision within His creatures soothes,

“For the vision, still has its time,

presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;

if it delays, wait for it

it will surely come, it will not be late.”

This is the vision that inspired a Francis (whose feast we celebrate tomorrow) to genuflect before a pregnant woman; a Peter Claver to climb onto slave ships to pour clean water in to the parched throats of African captives; a Bartholomew de las Casas to challenge a system that abused and violated native rights; a Teresa of Calcutta to bathe maggots from the face of a dying beggar in a gutter; a Marine sergeant to jump on a live grenade in a foxhole to preserve the lives of his platoon; a Gianna Molla to carry the baby in her womb all the way to birth even though she knew it would mean her own death . . .

This is the vision that inspires today’s premier civil rights cause, the pro-life movement, renewing our nation, world, culture, and Church.

We may legitimately ask, with Habakkuk, “when . . . how long . . . how much longer will the distortion of death seem to trump the vision of life? . . .” but we never ask if . . . for, fellow dreamers, we hold this truth to be self-evident.

“For the vision, still has its time,

presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;

if it delays, wait for it

it will surely come, it will not be late.”