Oct 6 Homily on Family Life
Then Notes on the Church’s teaching on Abortion Fr. John Barry
Scripture excerpts for 27th Sunday B
Genesis 2 The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a suitable partner for him.”So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man (Adam),
and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man.
When he brought her to the man, the man said: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! … [and this explains why today] a man leaves his father and mother (and a woman leave her home) and he clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.
Psalm 128 Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the recesses of the home; and your children be like olive plants around your table. Thus is the man blessed who fears (reveres) the LORD.
Hebrews 2 it was fitting that he, The Redeemer, for whom and through whom all things exist,
would come and perfect us and consecrate us through His own suffering, so then to bring many children to glory… that He would be called even our brother in humanity.
The Gospel of Mark chapter 10 The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked,
“Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” It is noted here that they were testing him.
He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?” They replied, “Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.”
But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.” “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”…… Later, then, people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, Jesus saw this and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.”
HOMILY AND TEACHINGS
Let us talk of Family Life and Marriage, and then comments on the impact of abortion on it.
The Sunday Scriptures weave a collection of marvelous images of the family life. In Genesis 2 it shows how God creates man and woman for one another, as to enter into the oneness He’s created for them to experience, in which God will use, then, as the starting place for a child to come, in the fruit of their love, and the child may now live in a family. This is God’s design for marriage and family. Psalm 128 takes us to around 1000bc when the same family model is lived out in Israel and the Psalmist describes its setting like a garden paradise, like with vines, plants and fruitfulness and life. It describes a marriage at work and its blessings into family life.
Yet the Gospel speaks of the rupture to the family by casual divorce. Jesus is challenged by adulterers who come and demand excuse for them in breaking the 6th Commandment. They say the Law says: “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” but we did so because of thus and such…. And they lay out their excuses, which the text doesn’t go into the details, but Jesus recognizes their excuses as lame. He sees right through their so-called excuses to abandon their wives and children. He is Teacher of Israel to them, but also God’s Son Who can size up the casual divorce presentation they make for themselves. Back then, too many Jewish men shirked responsibility for their actions and lived in a culture of men domineering women, and treating them poorly while blaming them unjustly. They’d divorce their wives over shallow and selfish reasons, sometimes leaving their family into awfully desperate and precarious situations. Like crooked lawyers, they’d find loopholes and ‘outs’ in the Jewish law to get out of marriages. That is why
Jesus says here: [Paraphrasing it a bit] ‘Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses wrote that provision in the law you cite. But you know what you were called to, men, but to join to your wife in one flesh, for it is not good for the man to be alone. But you are arguing to end your union and be on your own. You have hard hearts; you are unjust in these actions!’ (Jesus could see their mortal sin.) Then he tells to His apostles: ‘In such cases, like this, a man who divorces and then goes off and marries another, does break the Commandment, there is no excuse. He is in adultery. And women who do likewise, in this spirit, also commit adultery, displeasing to the Lord. [By the way, for cases where Jesus allows for a marriage vow dissolution, which does happen for more just cases, see Matthew 19. Those cases presented today for Petrine or Pauline petitions, as we call them now, will give the apostles reason and authority for granting the parting of ways, and it’s always done for the good of marriage and family—not selfish excuse.]
This brings us back to our theme of the Mass on marriage and family, and God’s wanting to protect it from serious breaks of God’s commandments. From breakers of “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” and from breakers of “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” (6th and 5th Commandments)
There are those who will excuse their breaking of the 5th Commandments. They think, like as in Mark 10’s scenario, they can stand before God and say, “While the Commandment says “Thou shalt not kill” but here is our reason for doing abortions. And they think themselves justified, saying: And there is a law in the land permitting it.
But does that make it right? Morality in the Church teachings says abortion is basically a wrong act As with the people in the Gospel defending their adulterous plans to Jesus, would someone fare better today on the abortion question to Him? Do they dare say it before the Lord Who sees and knows everything? Do they not know Jesus as of the Holy Trinity, the God of life? We have Christians in America or in the world who know the Commandments, but find excuse to break them. Yet the kind of killing of children that abortion is doing is not something the Church ever stood for. Maybe we could excuse the ignorant among us about God, but we Christians who have been taught a thing or two of our Faith in Christ Jesus have a responsibility as God’s called children in His Name. Our Bible says that “those who love God are those who keep His commandments.”
Our fundamental Holy Rule is to love one’s neighbor as our self, and in our children, there is our neighbor, even with the children in the womb. The pro-life movement of the Church answers the challenge: Who is our neighbor? Among some obvious other answers–It is the child among us. Isn’t it too often that the children are the most vulnerable and hurt in society in history, like today? How can, over the past 50 years in America—we settle for the abortion numbers of babies not getting out of the womb alive? The CDC’s last annual today for the USA was 930,000 deaths (not counting DC or New York City or four states that do not submit numbers—then round it up to a million children). Take the past few decades of lost babies and the total is tens of millions. Just for the USA alone. Can we stand before Jesus and say we practice the 6th Commandment here in America, when these cases pile up around us in multitude? Would we not think He would size us up, as he did his Gospel challengers, as people here with hardened hearts in the matter? I do think so. But the pro-life witness does go on with many adherents to be the “blessed who mourn.”
We live in a pluralistic society with non-believers and secular humanist and such in this nation, so we have consideration that they want to vote and have a nation allowing such practices—but it is good? Is it not a knock against our Christian witness of Jesus Christ in us that we have lost this respect for life in our land? I don’t talk of politics and influence, but of the spiritual matter going on and the goodness of God getting put aside.
The proud Jewish men testing Jesus in this Mark 10 situation knew they were of compromise to their faith, but emboldened enough to challenge the Holy Rabbi of God on their infidelity. And we have people still like that today, of the household of faith, who want to ‘defend their side.’
As God has always had a compassionate heart of Mercy for those who get hurt in family and marriage, He wants to help them. God also sees the ones who have done harm, and will reserve judgment for them in the end, if they won’t repent.
I think of the woman and son who lived as outcasts in Sidon, from a story in 1st Kings 17, and they are living on their last days of food. Meanwhile, God’s servant prophet Elijah is crossing the territory alone, successful in hiding as in flight from the angry ungodly Queen Jezebel’s army. God has Elijah meet her and bless her. The woman and child share their last food with him. God provides a miracle of food, and later, and miracle of rising of the child.
Elijah becomes a pro-life model there.
Today at Mass I’d like to introduce you to a ministry called The Gabriel Network. Gabriel was the angel in the Christmas story. We have stories today of Christians who would like to provide homes, help, food, clothes, counseling, babysitting, and all the more to mothers of children who want to keep them. They cannot respond to all the high numbers of abortions, and giving an option to all of them, but they offer it to who they are able, saving a child and mother and family one at a time. I know of some of the cases of saved families. I will have Dan Miller of the Network speak to you of their good work of love and life…. Homily end.
Notes and Facts
THE CHURCH HAS ALWAYS CONDEMED ABORATION AND TAUGHT MERCY
Here’s the proof: Gaudium et Spes 51 of Vatican II Documents state, “Abortion and
Infanticide…. are unspeakable crimes.” Then, the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
2271 says “Abortion is gravely contrary to the moral law”
Quote “The Church makes clear that abortion is a most serious and dangerous crime”
(Evangelium Vitae, 62) Quote “The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. The law forbidding it is universally valid: It obliges each and every one, always and everywhere.”(CCC2261)
Pope Francis tells us, “The Church’s teaching on this point is clear: human life is sacred
and inviolable”.
WHY IS THE CHURCH SO ADAMANT?
Pope Benedict XVI wrote that, “Life is the first good received from God and is
fundamental to all others; to guarantee the right to life…is the duty upon which the future
of humanity depends”.
IT’S ABOUT GOD
From Pope John Paul II, “The inviolability of the person…is a reflection of the absolute
inviolability of God”.
Human life is sacred – all men must recognize that fact. From its very inception it
reveals the creating hand of God”> (Mater et Magistra, 194)
“Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly
existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God.” (Evangelium Vitae, 2).
That quote relates to why we say hundreds of thousands of souls were lost to abortion-
not just human tissue.
Speaking of embodied souls, Pope Benedict XVI says “God’s love…sees an impression
of his own image and likeness in each one.”
“Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God
and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end.”
(CCC, 2258)
Rights to Life: First is God’s right. He means to possess the soul forever-for which He’s
created for Himself.
Abortion and Morals
IT’S ABOUT THE PERSON
Because we are made in God’s image (Gen. 7) Because of Word made Flesh, the
Imm???Emmanuel God (Jn 1, fs 7, 11)
Pope Francis tells us “Every child who..is condemned unjustly to being aborted bears
the face of Jesus Christ.”
Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “Every human being is endowed with a dignity that must
never be…destroyed”>.
“Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of
conception.” (CCC, 2270)
IT’S ABOUT THE GOOD OF SOCIETY
Cartius in Veritate, 28, states, “Openness to life is at the center of true development.”
Per Benedict XVI states, “The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every
other right, is the right to life itself.”
Again, from Pope St. John Paul II, “I wish to stress that respect for life from its
conception until natural death is the essential issue in the modern social question.”
WHAT ABOUT IT’S MY CHOICE
Pope Francis emphasizes that “So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable
the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right
to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself
and which can never be considered the ‘property’ of another human being.”
Life, especially human life, belongs to God; whosoever attacks human life attacks God’s
very self.” (Evangelium Vitae, 9)
Pope Francis goes on to state, “The tragedy of abortion is experienced by some with
superficial awareness, as if not realizing the extreme harm that such an act entails.”
“It pains me to say this. In the last century the entire world was scandalized over what
the Nazis were doing to maintain the purity of the race. Today we do the same thing, but
with white gloves” in abortion.
Choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral
sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable.” (Evangelium Vitae, 4)
Pope Francis knows that “Pregnancy is a difficult but wonderful time. (In pregnancy,
remember) a mother joins with God to bring forth the miracle of a new life”. (Planned
and safe in crisis pregnancies).
THE SAFEGUARDING OF HUMAN LIFE HAS PRECEDENCE OVER THE EXERCISE
OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM (CHOICE)
Pope Benedict XVI tells us that, “Abortion….cannot be a human right-it is the exact
opposite.”
Broad sectors of public opinion justify certain crimes against life in the name of the
rights of individual freedom”. (Evangelium Vitae, 2)
“One can never claim freedom of opinion as a pretext for attacking the rights of others,
most especially right to life.” (Declaration on Procured Abortion, 2)
“The legal toleration of abortion..can no way claim to be based on respect for the
conscience of others, precisely because society has the right and the duty to protect
itself against the abuses which can occur in the name of conscience and under the
pretext of freedom.” (Evangelium Vitae, 71)
THE CHILD IN THE WOMB IS NOT THE MOTHER’S BODY BUT IS A SEPARATE
PERSON: MY FREEDOM SHOULD NOT BE EXERCISED IGNORING THE RIGHTS
OF OTHER HUMANS
A widespread and insensitive mentality has led to the loss of the proper personal and
(s?) sensitivity to welcome new life.” Pope Francis on this idea of mother’s body has baby’s body under it as her body.