Respect for Life

In their later years, an older couple I knew lived in the apartment building just behind Village Drug. After the husband was diagnosed with dementia and was cared for at the VA Hospital, his wife lived there on her own. By her own choice, she never learned to drive, and so relied on the bus. Coming back from a shopping trip on a January afternoon, she slipped on the ice and fell on the sidewalk leading to the building. A young couple driving by saw her go down and stopped to help. They made sure she was not hurt, helped her to her feet and held her arm to get to the apartment. They brought in her purchases and made sure she was all right before they went on their way. She suffered no injuries, but of course was understandably shook up by the fall. But more than that, she was deeply grateful to the couple who stopped to help, even though she never got their names.

This was a moment of genuine respect for life.

We continue to need political advocacy and informed voters to foster the protection of human life across the entire spectrum of age, ethnicity, social status, abilities and disabilities, and all other distinctions we might draw that do not change the fundamental and inviolable dignity of life. For the most reliable information on the issues from a Catholic perspective, visit mncatholic.org, the website of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Minnesota bishops. Attempts to enshrine unchecked access to abortion across the entire span of pregnancy, assisted suicide, and euthanasia continue to challenge the Church's conviction that every life is a sacred gift of God.

We continue to need direct service to those in difficult pregnancies, the losses of aging, the immigrant, the homeless, and other persons whose needs do not fit neatly into our accustomed structures and preferences. Even for those who cannot offer that direct service, financial support and prayer is always needed. During October and January, we will offer ways to support Elevate and the Pregnancy Resource Center, two local agencies compassionately supporting women carrying a child and uncertain about their future.

We continue to need faithful and persevering prayer for the conversion of all people to the Gospel of Life, as St. John Paul II taught in his landmark 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae. He concluded it with this prayer:

O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life. Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy.

Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time.

Obtain for them the grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new, the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely, in order to build, together with all people of good will, the civilization of truth and love, to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and lover of life.

But first and foremost, we need an abiding and resilient respect for the people whom we see and interact with each day - those known to us, those who are strangers; those who are like us, and those who are not in some way; those whose needs are evident, and those who carry secret burdens.

I don't know either who that young couple was, or where they were from, or what they knew about Catholic teaching. But they lived it beautifully, hearts moved with compassion and concern for an older woman they had never met before. This is respect for life.

This was the insight of St. Francis of Assisi, whose 800th anniversary of death we commemorate this October 4. His biographer, Thomas of Celano, recorded his last words: "Brothers, I have done what is mine. I have sung my song. It remains for you to sing it." Every act of faith and love keep that song of faith and trust in God resounding throughout history; and, we believe, into eternity with all the saints.

Thanks, whoever you are out there, for caring and showing what respect for life looks like in a simple gesture of kindness on a January afternoon. That woman, helped by concerned strangers in a moment of need and vulnerability, was my mom.