Lesson from Fr. Paulus | Every Life Matters

We have just heard some of the most beautiful words in all of Sacred Scripture. God spoke to them to the prophet Jeremiah more than two thousand years ago, but that same God – our Lord – made sure that they weren't forgotten when Jeremiah died.

He inspired the sacred writer to record them for all time. He wanted to make sure that we would hear those same words spoken to us, twenty-five centuries later.

That's what the Bible is, remember: God's inspired and living word, meant to enlighten, encourage, and strengthen each one of us in every situation of our lives. And if we let these incredible words really penetrate our hearts today, that's exactly what will happen.

Which words am I referring to?

These: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I dedicated you."

Let us read them again, pausing after the word "you," so that each of us can insert there our first name, because that's how God wants us to hear these words: "Before I formed you [pause] in the womb I knew you [pause], before you [pause] were born I dedicated you [pause]."

None of us is here just by chance, as the Darwinists want us to believe. None of us is an unwanted mistake, as the pro-abortionists would like us to believe. None of us is a just a toy or experimental product manufactured by scientists, as the cloning-advocates and artificial reproduction companies seem to think.

Each one of us is a beloved, desired child of the living, eternal, all-wise, all-powerful God of the universe.

We have received our existence directly from him; if from all eternity he had not yearned for our friendship and envisioned a lasting purpose for each of us, we would not be here.

That is the dignity of human life – every human life, mine and yours included.

Spreading the Good News

This truth, that every human being is desired and loved by God for our own sake, that he yearns for the friendship of every person and has a transcendent purpose in mind for each human being, is at the very core of Christ's revelation.

But today's globalized world is in danger of losing sight of this truth because popular culture is no longer Christian. It tends to value human beings by externals: according to how much money they can make, or how athletic they are, or how beautiful they are.

Therefore, evils like abortion, euthanasia, and forced population control are not lessening, but spreading. The old law of the jungle is starting to re-emerge, and justice is being sacrifice – the strong, instead of helping the weak, are simply dominating them.

When a scientist in a laboratory creates, experiments on, and then disposes of the most vulnerable human beings, like tiny human embryos or babies in the womb, that's exactly what's happening.

Today, the Church is reminding us that we, the ones who do know the true source of human dignity, are called to do something about it.

We are like Jeremiah: God has sent us into this world not just to survive in it, but to transform it. "Stand up and tell them all that I command you," God said to Jeremiah, and he says the same thing to us.

With our example, our words, and our creative and active efforts to promote true human dignity, we can and must spread God's light and follow the "still more excellent way," as St Paul calls it in today's Second Reading, of Christ-like love.

It may be hard and uncomfortable at times, but God promises to guide us: "They will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD."

This week, convinced that every human being matters eternally to God, let's give him a chance to put his money where his mouth is.