The month of October, in addition to being a month where we especially honor Our Blessed Mother, is also Respect Life Month. Today being the first Sunday of October, we observe Respect Life Sunday. It’s a day when we resolve to be a positive force in our culture, being a voice that proclaims the dignity of all human life to the “culture of death” in which we live.
The focus of the pro-life movement has certainly changed since the Dobbs decision effectively ended the Roe v. Wade era and returned decisions on legalized abortion to the state level. However, the need to proclaim the pro-life message to our culture hasn’t diminished one bit. If anything, the intensely polarized culture in which we live has engendered a lot of hostility around the issue of abortion at the state level, and abortion certainly features prominently in the national elections, as well.
But no matter what the climate is in the secular culture around us, our message doesn’t change. This message is rooted in the very first chapter of Scripture: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). If every human being is created in God’s image, then every human being has a dignity given to them by God Himself, a dignity that no human being could ever take away, a dignity that could never be diminished by sin.
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He replied, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” We can see that love of God is inseparable from love of neighbor, and that we don’t get to pick and choose which neighbors are worth loving. We have to love unconditionally like Jesus did, being willing to see His image in every single person in this world.
That most certainly includes the unborn, who are infinitely precious in the eyes of the Lord from the moment of their conception. It also includes other people who are often victims of what Pope Francis refers to as our “throwaway culture”: the terminally ill, the disabled, the poor, the immigrant, the incarcerated.
I pray that during this Respect Life month, all of us will make a special effort to pray for an end to abortion and a deeper love and respect for all human life. Pray for our public officials and those who run for public office, especially those whose views have strayed far from the values of the Gospel. Perhaps this is the month that you could start praying a weekly family rosary or a novena. But however you do it, just make sure that you contribute to building up a culture of life by consistent prayer and a joyful witness of the Gospel. We have to believe that boldly living our faith in the world can plant the seeds from which a culture of life will grow.
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