Bishop Leo O’Reilly’s Homily
at the Vigil for All Nascent Human Life
St. Clare’s Church, Cavan, 27th November 2010
We join tonight with the Holy Father in this Vigil of Prayer for human life at its beginnings. We join with groups like this in other parishes throughout the diocese, in dioceses throughout the country and countries throughout the whole world in this great outpouring of prayer to God for the weakest and most vulnerable members of the human race.
The first thing we do is thank God, the giver of all good gifts, for the gift of life that we enjoy and all the gifts of creation. We thank God for the new life he has given us through his Son Jesus Christ. In the season of Advent which begins tonight, we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ. Christ is God’s greatest gift to the world because in Christ God has given us himself as our brother and our Saviour. He shared our weakness and vulnerability. In the words of the Second Vatican Council, “By his incarnation, the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every human being…Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly become one of us” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). If Christ has united himself with every human being, then everyone, even the weakest, especially the weakest, is infinitely precious. Every human life is sacred.
The sacredness of human life is still, thank God, acknowledged in our constitution and widely accepted in our country. But it would be foolish to think that we are not being affected by the widespread practice of abortion, embryo research, in vitro fertilization and other similar practices in the world we live in. Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul before him have often referred to the culture of the developed world as a culture of death. That culture touches all of us. It’s in the air we breathe. But as Christians we must be always unashamedly on the side of the culture of life, on the side of Christ, who came that we might have life and have it to the full.
Unfortunately the scriptwriters of the culture of death are well represented in the media. They are experts at concealing the reality and brutality of abortion under a cloak of jargon and euphemism. So, when they are arguing in the UN for the provision of abortion services in poorer countries, they don’t talk about abortion but about reproductive services. In any discussion of abortion they are always very careful to avoid the first and fundamental question in relation to it, namely, what is abortion? Just ask yourself, when did you hear a discussion on radio or TV about what abortion actually is? Did you ever hear it? I doubt it. You can’t allow that question to be asked because the answer is so obvious that a child could give it: it is the taking of an innocent human life.
There is a blindness in the face of the obvious evil of abortion, even in our own society. This blindness is part of the culture of death that the Popes have spoken about. The reading from the Book of Genesis points to the explanation of this strange blindness in our culture. It tells the story of Original Sin. It lays out in very concrete terms the effects of the rebellion against God which we call sin. And it tells us that none of us are exempt from these effects. The only one to be spared this contagion was Mary the mother of Jesus. Long ago we learned that two of the things Original sin did were to “darken our understanding and weaken our will”. That darkening and weakening are nowhere more evident than in the inability or unwillingness of otherwise good and intelligent people to see that abortion is gravely wrong because it is an attack on human life at its beginning.
I have no desire to pass judgment on anyone. I have no desire to add to the guilt or anguish that someone who has endured the trauma of abortion must live with. But honesty and fidelity to the gospel of life compel me to speak plainly. Abortion is wrong. Experiments with embryos are wrong. Human life is sacred from start to finish, from the womb to the tomb, or it’s not sacred at all.
In his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul said: “To defend and promote life, to show reverence and love for it, is a task which God entrusts to every human being”(EV 42). In the face of the culture of death, we must try to promote a culture of life. We can do this in our daily lives by exercising a spirit of charity towards everyone, by our own self-giving, by showing care and respect for all life and for the life of everyone. We can support organisations that work to protect human life. And we can pray. We pray to Mary, the Mother of Life, in the words of the Prayer of Pope John Paul:
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 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.
Pope John Paul II
Encyclical Letter “The Gospel of Life”
