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| Bishop Speaks | ||
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| October 4, 2007 Edition | ||
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Dear friends,
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The month of October always challenges us to a renewed understanding of the role of our Blessed Mother in our Catholic lives since October is the month of the Most Holy Rosary. The month of October also calls us to reflect on the commitment to the respect for life, which we share in the first place as members of the human family, and also as baptized Catholics.
Mary is precisely the "new Eve" and the Hebrew name "Eve" means "mother of all the living." In Mary we find the one who was, in a perfect sense, the protector and the giver of life, in that she gave birth, according to the flesh, to Him who is the author of all life. During the month of October our devotion to Mary and our respect for all human life, from conception until natural death, should easily coalesce and find deeper expression.
I would hope that all of us, during this month, especially in the context of the family, would pray the Rosary daily and offer that Rosary up so that our country and our culture would grow in concrete expression of respect for human life.
Respect for life extends beyond human life, which is always most important. It is sometimes discouraging to see more sympathy accorded dogs which are brutally murdered than pre-born human beings who are themselves brutally murdered. But at the same time, everything which is alive does make a claim on us. We are not free to disrespect the life of any living being.
And so, in recent days Our Holy Father Benedict has been inviting us to ponder our responsibilities toward the environment. Pope Benedict is being called by some "the Green Pope," and as long as that nomenclature is not subsumed into simply some political agenda, it is very appropriate.
Pope Benedict has been reflecting recently on the Fathers of the Church, many of whom show us how the beauty of all creation leads us to see the face of its Author, the face of its Creator. When the environment is disfigured, one of the main pathways to seeing the face of our Creator becomes blocked, in such wise that an approach to the Creator open to all human beings is then closed.
Stewardship of the environment, care for the life which is around us for the sake of the flourishing of human beings might well be the focus of this year's respect life observance during October. Care for the environment means maintaining that natural pathway, available to every human being, to approach the beauty of its Author and Creator, God Himself. Careful stewardship of our environment is, in fact, an act of caring for the freedom of every human being to come to know the Creator by way of the beauty of His creation, which we are careful not to disfigure.
And so, during this month of October, when we again proclaim the sacred dignity of every human being, from conception until natural death, let us also reflect on the care for life which has been entrusted to us by the creator in terms of the beauty of nature and the environment, which is His special gift to us human beings, so that we might better be drawn into the embrace of His own eternal beauty and divine love.
Thank you for reading this and may God bless each one of you.
Praised be Jesus Christ!