28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
~ As we continue to observe Respect Life Month this October, I extend gratitude to all our parishioners who promote a culture of life in our community, especially the members of our Respect Life Ministry, who advocate for the protection and sanctity of human life from conception until natural death. Please support their current fundraiser for Our Lady’s Inn, which provides excellent services for women and their unborn children.
As Pope Leo recently reminded us, we Catholics advocate for the dignity of human life across the spectrum – from the child in its mother’s womb, to the inmate on death row, to the migrants and refugees seeking a better life. Let us work and pray for the conversion of the whole world from a culture of death to the Gospel of Life.
Bishop Daniel Thomas of Toledo, Chair of the US Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities, recently issued this statement for Respect Life Month, which I offer for your prayer, reflection, and encouragement. May life be victorious!
With great joy we celebrate October as Respect Life Month amid the Church’s Jubilee Year of Hope. As Pope Francis said, this Jubilee Year “offers us the opportunity to appreciate anew, and with immense gratitude, the gift of the new life that we have received in Baptism, a life capable of transfiguring death’s drama.” The life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is the foundation of our hope. Through Christ, our sins are forgiven, death is overcome, and life is victorious.
Yet, the daily headlines remind us of how desperately our world is thirsting for the hope that only God can provide. Every day we witness the overwhelming disregard for human life: through rising rates of abortion and assisted suicide; the killing of innocent school children, even at prayer; the mistreatment of our immigrant sisters and brothers as they endure an environment of aggression; and political and ideological violence inflicted against unsuspecting victims. These attacks threaten life precisely when it is most vulnerable and in need of protection.
Despite these realities, the gift of human life exists as a sign of hope to our world today, defying the powers of darkness and the culture of death. It is of the utmost importance that we work to ensure that every life, in every stage and circumstance, is protected in law.
Earlier this year, history was made when Planned Parenthood and other big abortion businesses were banned from receiving federal Medicaid dollars for one year. I thank Catholics across the country who have embraced a nationwide call to prayer for the end of all taxpayer funding of abortion centers, and I ask that we continue those prayers throughout the month of October.
This Jubilee Year we are challenged to be agents of hope to those whose hearts are burdened by trial, difficulty, or suffering, offering them the hope that comes from Christ Jesus alone. Walking with Moms in Need and Project Rachel Ministry are just two examples of how the Church continuously reaches out with love, compassion, and mercy to those most in need of a message of hope.
As we observe Respect Life Month, together we embrace the words of Pope Leo XIV, “How important it is that each and every baptized person feel himself or herself called by God to be a sign of hope in the world today.” Each of us is called to be a witness to the Gospel of Life, proclaiming in word and deed the innate goodness and dignity of every human person.