The Gospel of Life

The Gospel of Life is at the heart of Jesus' message. It is to be preached with dauntless fidelity as "good news" to the people of every age and culture. When He presents the heart of His redemptive mission, Jesus says: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." John 10:10. In truth, He is referring to that "new" and "eternal" life which consists in communion with the Father, to which every person is freely called in the Son by the power of the sanctifying Spirit. It is "precisely in this life" that all the aspects and stages of human life acheive their full significance. In a special way, believers in Christ must defend and promote the right of every human being's life to have sacred value... from its very beginning until its end. The boundless love of God is revealed in John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever shall believe in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life." But this verse also reveals the incomparable value of every human person. Life on earth remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters. We shall concentrate our attention on a category of attacks--affecting life in its earliest and in its final stages. These attacks tend no longer to be considered as "crimes"; paradoxically they assume the nature of "rights". Such attacks strike human life at the time of its greatest frailty, when it lacks any means of self defence. Even more serious is the fact that most often, those attacks are carried out in the very heart of and with the complicity of the family--the family which by its nature is called to be the "sanctuary of life". In this way we revert to a state of barbarism which one hoped had been left behind forever. With time, the threats against life have not grown weaker. They are taking on vast proportions. They are not only threats coming from the outside, from the forces of nature or the "Cains" who kill the "Abels"; No. They are scientifically and systematically programmed threats. This century will have been an era of massive attacks on life, an endless series of wars and a continual taking of innocent human life. False prophets and false teachers have had the greatest success. It cannot be denied that such a culture of death, taken as a whole, betrays a completely individualistic concept of freedom, which ends up by becoming the freedom of the "strong" against the "weak" who have no choice but to submit. It is precisely in this sense that Cain's answer to the Lord's question: "Where is Abel your brother?" can be interpreted "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?" Genesis 4:9. The answer: Yes. Every man is his "brother's keeper" because God entrusts us to one another. A large part of contemporary society looks sadly like that humanity which Paul describes in his letter to the Romans. It is composed of "men who by their wickedness suppress the truth" having denied God and believing that they can build the earthly city without Him. "They became futile in their thinking" so that "their senseless minds were darkened, claiming to be wise they became fools." Carrying out works deserving of death and "they not only do them but approve of them who practice them." Romans 1: 18-32 When conscience, this bright lamp of the soul "calls evil good and good evil" it is already on the path to the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness. It would be to give a one-sided picture, which could lead to sterile discouragement, if the condemnation of the threats to life were not accompanied by the presentation of the positive signs at work. There are still many married couples who, with a generous sense of responsibility, are ready to accept children as the "supreme gift of marriage". Many centers in support of life are sponsored by individuals and groups, which, with admirable dedication and sacrifice, offer moral and material support to mothers who are in difficulty and are tempted to have recourse to abortion. This situation, with its light and shadows, ought to make us fully aware that we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the "culture of death" and the "culture of life". We find ourselves not only "faced with" but necessarily "in the middle of" this conflict. We are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsiblity of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life. The unconditional choice for life reaches its full religious and moral meaning when it flows from faith in Christ. Nothing helps us so much to face positively the onflict between death and life in which we are engaged as faith in the Son of God who became man and dwelt among men so "that they may have life, and have it abundantly." It is a matter of faith in the Risen Lord who has conquered death. With the light and strength of this faith the Church is becoming more aware of the grace and responsibility which comes down to her from her Lord of proclaiming, celebrating, and serving the Gospel of Life.

"See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil....I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live." Deut. 30: 15,19

Taken from Evangelium Vitae by Pope John Paul II (I did change it around a little to make it more readable)