ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

"Serving in Love & Gratitude"

Dear Friends in our Lord Jesus Christ,
Dear Collaborators in the exhilarating mission of respecting, protecting, loving
and serving life,

This morning we have much to be grateful for. So we begin our Diocesan Pro-Life Directors’ meeting with a Mass “in Thanksgiving to God.”
In his letter to the Colossians, Saint Paul tells the early Christians to “be thankful.”

“Whatever you do, in word or in deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

God has been so faithful to us in the past, is dwelling among us right now, and is already providing for our future, in ways yet unknown to us.

Jesus Christ is the reason we can take what we have been given, and then in turn, freely give it to others – in our work, our families, our parishes, and the broader community. He commands us to love one another as he loved us, and He makes it possible for us to do so. In a special way, He equips us for the obedience of love through the Sacraments.

How has God been faithful in the past?
God loved us from the beginning and chose us to belong to Him. He claimed each of us as his own in Baptism, and so all our labor in the pro-life fields belongs to Him. Each time we bless ourselves from the holy water font, may it be a reminder that our whole person is covered by the saving act of Christ. May all our work be a sign of the One to whom we belong – from everyday tasks to our most high-profile projects.

After Baptism we were sealed with the Holy Spirit in Confirmation. Having received the gifts of the Spirit, we are able go out into the world with boldness, compassion and wisdom. Somewhere along the way, He “chose you and appointed you” to serve in pro-life leadership, sending you in His name “to bear fruit that will remain.” Since then you have relied on the power of your Confirmation, and you must continue to do so each day as you teach, organize, and pray for the protection of all human life.The whole Church is grateful to God for your commitment to the pro-life cause. When each of you came into town for this directors’ meeting, you told us your length of service in pro-life work. It turns out that your tenure adds up to hundreds of work-years in cumulative service. Along the way, you and your families have made many quiet sacrifices of time and resources. For all of this the Church is profoundly grateful.

How is God providing in the present moment?
We are presently gathered in this Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, in a year dedicated to the great convert and missionary Saint Paul. If we look at the stained glass windows behind me, on the right we see three scenes depicting Saint Paul’s zeal for God: his conversion on the road to Damascus, his preaching to the Athenians about the “unknown God,” and his death in Rome by beheading.

In many ways, you are called to engage the modern-day “Athenians” – our neighbors who worship a God they do not know. You have chosen to follow a path that is extremely arduous. How does God sustain you along it, day in and day out?

He sustains you first and foremost through grace flowing from the Eucharist which we are now celebrating together. This food is mysterious, active, living. It is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Communion, the Lord Jesus gives you the daily bread you need to face all the challenges of proclaiming with love the Gospel of Life.

Sometimes the hardest challenges to cope with result from a lack of unity in the Body of Christ, which is the Church. The Eucharist furnishes the strength to bear with one another because He bore with us. We can forgive one another, because we – ourselves undeserving – have been forgiven. We can teach and admonish each other – not in manipulation or pride, or “lording it over others”, but in love – because he has shown us the way of humble leadership.

In His providence that surrounds this moment, God has made it possible for 115 of you to come together this year – a record for this annual meeting! This morning, in the stillness of this sacred space, you prepare yourselves to receive the wisdom and strength offered throughout the entire day. You will hear presentations about Catholic Faithful Citizenship, the moral wrong of destroying human embryos for research, and moral, practical and legal developments affecting vulnerable patients near the end of life. Finally, a panel of three of your peers will address practical challenges in the task of the diocesan pro-life director.

You will also have an opportunity for some recreation this evening and in the coming days. It is important for you to take advantage of that “down time” and let God accomplish his restorative work in you through leisure and fellowship. I pray that this gathering may be a unique opportunity for you to be refreshed in your vital work as you support and encourage each other in the Body of Christ.

Where might we expect to see God’s faithfulness in the future?
Saint Paul says us to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” Here we look to Mary as our model, for she did this with her whole person. With her famous “yes”, she received the living Word of God and allowed Christ to dwell in her. Our Lady of Guadalupe, visibly pregnant with our Lord, is such a beautiful image – and such a fitting one for all pro-life work.

Dear friends: you are challenged to be like our Lady. As she was open, you too must be open to God at work in your life. Our capacity to serve the Gospel of Life depends on it. As Pope Benedict said in his homily as he celebrated the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception for the first time as Pope: "The closer a person is to God, the closer he or she is to people. We see this in Mary. The fact that Mary is totally with God is the reason why she is so close to human beings."

Unfortunately, we often see the opposite. So many people in our society have turned away from God, rejecting his commandments, thinking this autonomy would bring freedom for themselves and others. But in losing God, they lose sight of the innate dignity of the human person as well.

Just last week at World Youth Day, Pope Benedict XVI put it so clearly to a group of disadvantaged young people in rehabilitation:

“The cult of material possessions, the cult of possessive love and the cult of power often lead people to attempt to ‘play God’: to try to seize total control, with no regard for the wisdom or the commandments that God has made known to us. This is the path that leads towards death. By contrast, worship of the one true God means recognizing in him the source of all goodness, entrusting ourselves to him, opening ourselves to the healing power of his grace and obeying his commandments: that is the way to choose life” (Address to the Rehabilitation Community of the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, Australia).

Mary, the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of God and the Mother of the Church, shows us what it means to entrust ourselves to God. She freely submitted herself as a “servant” saying “Let it be done to me according to your word.” Thus she bore Jesus, source of all true freedom. Her “yes” to life helped makes the gift of freedom from sin available to all humanity.

The secular worldview says “no” to being God’s servant, and affirms the self as if to say: “Let it be done according to my word.” But a so-called freedom without God winds up eliminating all other values, including that of life itself. An autonomous freedom is arbitrary. The right to life, which properly belongs to all members of the human family, is too often narrowed to those who “qualify” for personhood, arbitrarily defined. This happened long ago with regard to unborn children. Now we see a further narrowing of the right to life in the efforts made to eliminate the rights of disabled newborn children or those who are in a so-called “persistent vegetative state.”

According to this view, conscience rights for doctors, pharmacists and health care workers no longer universally apply. We must work hard to counter the sophisticated efforts of those who would grant conscience rights only to those who are willing – according to their distorted conscience – to destroy innocent human life, whether in the lab, a freezer storage unit, in utero, or in a hospital bed.

There is always a temptation, even in our pro-life work, to want to do things entirely our own way, without sufficient unity with our fellow servants in the cause of life. While we were not conceived without sin, we are all offered the gift of sacramental reconciliation. Each time we avail ourselves of it, God restores us to a joyful relationship with Himself. If we sin and allow its deadly effects to remain in our lives, we hamper our own ability to serve in love – and obscure the bright witness that God would have us be to others. Purity of spirit – restored and guarded closely – allows us to “get out of God’s way” so he might work powerfully through us in the future: saving lives, changing hearts and minds, and healing those who are broken by the culture of death.

It is important to look forward with enthusiasm and immense hope to the rest of this Pauline Year. God has chosen you to serve as his new missionaries for the Gospel – the Gospel of Life. Much work remains ahead as you promote the Bishops’ Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities in your dioceses. Remember, however, that God has equipped you to bear “fruit that will remain.” What partnerships might emerge through your openness to the Holy Spirit? What new initiatives might you “conceive”? Which projects, now only in embryonic stages, will quicken and start “to show”? What will your long, hard labors give birth to?

We do not yet know what those fruits will look like. We know only that God has always been faithful in the past, that He continues to be with us now, and that He will remain with us if we love one another as He has loved us. And hence, dear friends, in all your efforts and prayerful strivings in the cause of life, you have the exhilarating assurance that whatever you do in word and deed, you do “in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Amen.