EDITORIAL

Additional messengers needed to share God’s healing love during Respect Life Month

Posted

The Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has announced the theme for this year’s Respect Life Month, which is observed every October: “Every Life: Cherished, Chosen, Sent.” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, chairman of the committee, acknowledging the unique difficulties faced by the Church today, said: “At such a time as this, we become even more aware of the need for messengers of God’s love and instruments of His healing. We realize again, with renewed urgency, our personal call to help others encounter God’s transforming, life-giving love and to defend the sanctity of every person’s life, at every stage and in every circumstance.”

In an age when a human life is often measured in terms of what practical or concrete benefit it can have for society, the call to cherish every person reminds us that human life receives its dignity from God himself. All human lives matter; all human lives have value. That God chooses human beings to participate in his divine plan in real and meaningful ways reminds us that God has indeed made us “little less than the angels” (Psalm 8:5). That God continues to send human beings into the world as messengers of his Gospel and as witnesses of his Son Jesus reminds us that the task we have been given requires not mere human ingenuity or invention, but grace, which is nothing less than God’s very power itself at work in us.