Homily for the
13th Sunday of Ordinary
Time
June 30, 2024
Wis 1: 13-15; 2:
23-24
Collect
St. Francis Xavier,
Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption,
Bronx
“God did not make death, nor does he rejoice
in the destruction of the living” (Wis 1: 13).
Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General
Last week the surgeon general of the United
States suggested that gun violence in our country is a public health crisis, and
we should tackle it the same way we did smoking.[1]
I suggest that our national problem lies
deeper. We’ve made human life cheap. We’ve made it expendable. We’ve commodified it. We’ve made it a market product.
Is there anyone here who thinks his or her
value as a person should depend on someone else’s opinion? That someone else has the right to decide
whether you may live?
In mid-20th century there was a regime that
identified certain populations as subhuman and deserving of extermination. The Nazis murdered 6 million Jews and another
6 million Poles and other Slavic people, Gypsies, communists, homosexuals, and
handicapped people they considered undesirable and unfit to live. All that was done legally by a democratically
elected government.
In our time Iceland boasts that it’s
eliminated the birth defect of Down’s syndrome.
How? By aborting all unborn
persons detected with that genetic defect:
not worthy of birth, not worthy of life.
So they say. The same practice is
very common in our country and all of so-called Western civilization.
By similar reasoning, a host of Western
countries and U.S. states have legislated doctor-assisted suicide or euthanasia
for people whose lives no longer have meaning or value because of age, illness,
suffering, or even mental incapacity. So
they say. Sick or elderly people hasten death or are pressured to do so lest they
become too burdensome—to themselves, or to their relatives. (Ironically, Western society is struggling to
deal with a crisis of adolescent suicide, which may be driven by depression and
a sense of meaninglessness.)
The Word of God today tells us, “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.” It goes on: “God formed human beings to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made them. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it” (Wis 2:23-24). Those who are avid for death—thru abortion, euthanasia, gun violence, or war, or who are careless about human life thru drug trafficking or the destruction of the environment in which we live—these are allies of the devil. Last Wednesday Pope Francis “denounced drug traffickers as murderers.”[2]
In the prayer a little earlier, we noted that
God “chose us to be children of light,” and we asked that “we may not be
wrapped in the darkness of error but always be seen to stand in the bright
light of truth.” Standing in truth
contrasts us with the Devil, whom Jesus labeled “a liar and the father of lies”
(John 8:44). The Devil’s allies sell us
the lie that inconvenient people are expendable: people who were conceived accidentally, people
who have birth defects, people who aren’t the desired sex (in Asia it’s common
to abort girls, and at least one recent mass shooting targeted women), people who
aren’t the same ethnicity (a cause of war and genocide and some mass shootings),
people who practice a different religious faith or moral code (religious
violence and targeting gays).
The Garden of Eden & the Fall of Man
Peter Paul Rubens & Jan Brueghel the Elder
In this election year, abortion is a
significant issue. The Devil’s allies
tell us that an unborn human being isn’t fully human or is just a clump of
cells, so disposing of it is simply about “choice.” The Devil’s allies tell us the issue is
reproductive health. Well, reproduction
happens as soon as the male and female cells unite. That’s not a religious opinion. That’s not a Catholic truth. It’s basic biology. They don’t want to prevent reproduction. They want to kill what already exists—a human
being.
The logic of the Devil’s allies is that if
you desire a child, it has dignity and value.
If you don’t desire it, it’s worthless; it’s a problem; it’s
disposable. Pope Francis compares
abortionists to Mafia hitmen.
A similar logic drives the market to create
children in a laboratory. You know
there’s been debate recently about in vitro fertilization. The Catholic Church has regarded IVF as
immoral since it was developed 50 years ago.
IVF, and surrogate motherhood too, commodify children. They make human beings manufactured
products. In IVF, fertilized eggs that
aren’t perfect are disposed of as so much waste product. Surplus eggs are put into cold storage like a
side of beef (but less visible), where they may remain for years, be fought
over in court, and eventually destroyed.
Is that God’s plan for human beings?
God doesn’t rejoice in the destruction of the
living. He formed us to be
imperishable. He has an eternal destiny
for every one of us; every one of us is created in his image. No one is a meaningless clump of cells; in
God’s eyes no one is defective or disposable.
To quote our Lord Jesus again, “I came that they may have life, and have
it abundantly” (John 10:10). He
demonstrated that twice in today’s gospel, restoring life to a dead child and
healing a woman whose bleeding made her socially and religiously
handicapped. Finally, he demonstrated it
by his own resurrection—in which we will share.
He made us in his image, imperishable.
[1]
https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/firearm-violence/index.html.
[2]
Reported by Nicole Winfield, AP, June 26: https://apnews.com/article/vatican-pope-drugs-un-98ada486bb7a12c112884dbf5945cf78.
No comments:
Post a Comment