Respect Life and the Month of the Rosary

Some thoughts from October 4, 2015, Respect Life Sunday

Today begins the Bishops’ Synod in Rome on marriage and the family. Please keep in your prayers the intention that they will accept the grace to help guide the flock – us – in living the sacrament of matrimony faithfully and fruitfully.

Today is also Respect Life Sunday, and I would like to focus our reflection on Life – a with a particular emphasis on the life-giving nature of marriage.

Starting a few verses before the first reading today:

Gen 1:25-28 "And [then God] said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.”

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Have you ever thought about what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God?

With regard to the image and likeness of God, we do have lots of terms that we use to describe God. We say, for example, that God is all-powerful. And when God created man, God gave man a share of His own power, even if to a lesser degree.

The Psalm says, (Psalm 8: 5-9) “Thou hast made him a little less than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honor. And hast set him over the works of thy hands. Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover, the beasts also of the fields. The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea.”

Our free will also gives us inordinate power. We can choose, while the rest of creatures of the earth operate only at the level of instinct.

We might say, then, that the unique power God has given to man over all the other creatures of the earth, in a certain sense, reflects the power of God. It is a way that God has given us a share of His power, even if to a lesser degree than His own. It is a way we are cast in His image and likeness.

We say that God is omniscient – all-knowing. And He has given us knowledge above all the creatures of the earth, only less than the angels.

We might say, then, that the unique powers of knowledge God has given to man over all the other creatures of the earth, in a certain sense, reflect the knowledge of God. It is a way that God has given us a share of His knowledge, even if to a lesser degree than His own. It is a way we are cast in His image and likeness.

God is all present. We are not. We are limited by time and space. He is eternal, He is the same always and forever. We are not. We change, we get old and wrinkly and we die. So we may be like God in some ways, but we are not God. On the other hand, He has given us souls that do live forever, and at the final judgment our bodies will be reunited to our souls and they will live in a glorified state forever – just like the bodies of the Blessed Mother and of Christ Himself. So, in a sense, we do share even in God’s immortality. We are made in the image and likeness – even of God’s infinite nature.

But above all we say that God is Love. God is a love that is immeasurable by any human standard. We are reminded of this every time we look upon the Crucifix. God’s love is supremely sacrificial. He loved us so much that He gave His only Son to be sacrificed on the Cross that we might be saved from our sins, that we might return to His grace and have the opportunity once again to share eternal life and happiness with Him. It is unimaginable that almighty God would humble Himself to take on the flesh on his creatures – to be, as it were, “lower than the angels” and subject Himself to the torments and tortures of his sinful subjects. That is a love that cannot be explained.

It is also a love that cannot be contained. God’s love is not just supremely sacrificial; it is supremely creative - so beyond anything that we might imagine, that even He cannot contain it. Not that He does not have that power. It’s more that by His nature, but its nature it is a love that is driven to be shared. That’s what makes it love.

I don’t know if the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe is true or not. It doesn’t matter. It is an incredible image – to imagine for a moment that God’s love was so great, so expansive, so uncontainable that it literally exploded with creative energy. And even then it was driven to create more – the earth, that special and unique life-giving place in all the universe; then it was driven to create more - the life-giving water of the earth, the plants, the animals, the birds, the fishes; and yet it was driven to create more - a most special creature, one created in God's very own image and likeness, the crowning jewel of His creation: man.

God created man in His image and in His likeness, giving to him many of the attributes that we ascribe to God Himself. – to a lesser degree, of course. He gave him power, i.e., dominion over the other creatures; He gave him knowledge, free-will, an eternal soul – and, perhaps above all, He gave man the capacity for love.

Love which by its very nature, as we see in the work of God, is expansive, it is creative, it is life giving.

So God made Eve – as we hear in the first reading -

• so that Adam would have another on whom He could shower his love

• so that he could live as an image and likeness of God – an outpouring of Love.

• so the two of them (actually the three of them - a kind of trinity – man, woman, God) – in a union created by and sanctified by God – could shower their love on each other – and live as a reflection of the Love of God. (This is what St. Paul means when he calls marriage a great mystery and he relates it to the mystery of Christ and the Church.)

And this love of God in the union of man and woman is, by its nature creative. It is life giving… by its very nature.

So if the Love of God finds it fulfillment in creation, in the giving of life, then, so does the love of marriage find its fulfillment in creation, in the giving of life.

• Marriage is not JUST a sophisticated biological mechanism God developed to populate the earth,

• It is a sacred reflection of the love of God – cast in the image and likeness of God - driven to be creative, to be life giving.

So IF we thwart the creative, life giving, nature of marital love - by contraception

• The union no longer reflects the creative, life giving, love of God.

• It is no longer loving – that is outpouring, it is self-centered.

It is a way that a couple says to God – we reject your image and likeness; we say “no” to collaborating with you in your work of Creation;

Just imagine if Abraham and Sarah had said no to God’s plan for creation – and Isaac had never been born – whose son Jacob begat the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Just imagine if Elizabeth and Zechariah had said no to God (Whoa! God! We are too old for this!) – and John the Baptist had never been born.

Just imagine if Mary had said no and Christ had never been born – no Nativity, no Crucifixion, no Resurrection, no Church, no Mass, no salvation yet. Yet, she said yes, and, as a result, we have all of this.

When a couple says yes to God, they are an Abraham and Sarah, a Zechariah and Elizabeth, and – at least metaphorically – Mary and Joseph – joining themselves in an intimate and mystical relationship with God as His collaborators in His plan for Creation.

Some may be tempted to think the contraception is a private, personal matter without implications outside the immediate family. This is not true.

When a couple says no to God, not only do they reject His gift of giving them a role in His plan for creation, but also, by their actions, they say, "You are not the Lord of Life, we are."

Consider for a moment: If I am the Lord of Life, I determine when life is to be given, and I can determine when it is taken away. Is it a surprise, then, that two generations after all the major denominations in the United States – except Christ’s Church, the Catholic Church – two generations after these denominations embraced contraception Abortion was legalized, quickly followed by assisted suicide?

It shouldn’t be. It’s all a logical sequence.

If marital intimacy is not, at the first, procreative, if it rejects its partnership with God in His plan for filling the earth, then what difference does it make if I am intimate with a woman or another man? And so two generations later, we legalize same-sex unions. All a logical sequence.

In fact, the youth of the country are way ahead of us on this one. From their perspective, if marriage is not about reflecting the image and likeness of God, if it’s not about procreation, if it doesn’t matter whom I marry, what does it matter if we marry at all? So cohabitation, which once carried at least some semblance of social stigma, becomes an accepted societal norm.

All a logical sequence. A sequence that has brought this country to the brink of self-destruction morally. And many of us, I imagine, feel somewhat helpless – like things are spinning rapidly out of control, and there is little we can do about it.

But that is exactly what the devil wants us to feel. Helpless. And without God, we are, indeed, helpless, but with Him we are indestructible. No one – especially the devil and all his minions – can stand against us. We must remember that God Himself, in Jesus Christ the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, told us “I will be with you until the end of time.” And again He promised us, “Against My Church, the gates of Hell shall not prevail.” And we know that God is also ALL TRUTH.

So, on a Respect Life Sunday, our first order of business, is the same order of business we have every day of our lives – to repent, to rethink our lives, to return to God, ask for His forgiveness and with the help of his grace recommit our fallen natures to follow His commandments and to live up to His call for us to be His collaborators in giving life to the world, bringing souls into the world that may one day live happily in his presence for eternity.

But let me leave you with a couple of specific thoughts.

If you are of child bearing age, let me say first, that as a married cleric, I do understand intimately the struggles that couples face when the Church asks them to be open to life, to say yes to God. It is not easy; it requires great sacrifice. But the reward is heaven, and that is worth any struggle, any sacrifice.

So, I would ask you to pray together for the strength to say yes to God. I cannot promise that saying yes to God will be easy, but I can absolutely promise you that God will be with you every step of the way. He will never abandon you.

If you are of post-child bearing age, (I imagine you were thinking, “Finally, a sermon I can ignore.” Well no such luck.) remember that the whole body suffers if just part of it is sick. If your child is sick, do you not suffer? If your children have left the Church, when your daughter says to you, “I don’t want to have any children,” do you not feel the pain? Yes, we do. The sins of the flesh that are consuming our society threaten all of us – even those of us who are too old to worry about something like contraception, and all of us need to be part of the cure.

Many of us who are older have fewer distractions in our lives than our child and their children. We can man the spiritual ramparts with the great weapons of prayer and sacrifice – and we need to be about that most earnestly. In the fourth of The Blessed Mother’s apparitions to the children at Fatima she said to them, “"Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners; for many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and pray for them." That is our work.

So I would ask you to consider adding one thing to your prayer life not just for your own sake, but for the sake of those who desparately need your prayers. This is the month of the Rosary. We have a beautiful practice here at Queen of Peace of reciting the Rosary before every Mass. Maybe you can come a few minutes earlier and join the recitation of the Rosary. Maybe you can stay after Mass and recite the Divine Mercy chaplet. (That particular prayer has a special benefit. For all who stay for a few minutes after Mass and pray it, it seems to empty the parking lot for them.) But if you cannot, do at least one thing that you are not doing now. If you don’t make of morning offering when you get up, do it. If you don’t pray grace before meals, do it; If you pray before meals add grace after meals. If you do that, add an act of contrition before you retire at night. Whatever it is, make a commitment today that this month to add at least one item to your prayer life. Take one step toward making your life a fuller life of prayer and sacrifice. You need it, and the rest of us need it.

God wants nothing more … Indeed, it is God’s passionate desire that every soul go the heaven. His desire for this is so passionate that He sacrificed His son for it – so passionate that He created us for that reason – that we might share eternal happiness with Him in heaven. For Him to take us into heaven, we need but say yes to Him, and we need also to respond to the request of His mother to pray and sacrifice that everyone will accept that same grace to give the same yes – a yes to live in the image and likeness of God that gives life in this world and preserves it in the next.

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