Mass for Life Homily ~ Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception ~ January 21, 1999 Part 2 of 3
Tonight we gather as a people of faith transparent before our God. He knows our weaknesses, our failures, our frailties, our frustrations. But God also inspires our dreams and sets before us the mountain to be climbed and the promise of a path marked out and of energy which will not fail, both to begin the ascent and to achieve the summit.
We are transparent to our God, from the instant he first touched us, at the moment of conception in our mothers' wombs. Tonight we are grateful for the wonder of God's love for us, in making us, in giving us life and in sending his son Jesus Christ to suffer, die and rise for us. We are grateful to God for pouring out his Holy Spirit into our hearts, so that we can pray to God as “Our Father” and praise him for the wonder of ourselves and of his works.
The path up the mountain is marked out by God's word, given on the mountaintop long ago through Moses in the Commandments and, as we heard again tonight, charted for us by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. Some of us bishops were asked some time ago what message from a spiritual leader touched us most. I thought immediately of what Pope John Paul II said to us American bishops in Chicago on his first visit to the United States. I had been ordained a bishop just two weeks earlier.
He gave us for our meditation the beatitudes of Jesus. He reminded us that the beatitudes are basic to the thinking and the praying of any disciple of Jesus. They can help us now as the Vigil of Prayer for Life begins. Remember that “blessed” means “happy,” and that Jesus is teaching us that we are truly happy when we can identify with what he teaches us:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit”"poor so that our hearts are not pulled or cramped by what may be a passing fancy, a toy or trinket in comparison with what really counts with God. Those who are poor in fact are especially beloved by Jesus. In their faces he has taught us to try to see his own. The heart that is poor in spirit is open to the richness of God's marvelous gift of inner peace. It is a heart able to receive and to rejoice in the meaning of the gift of life.
“Blessed are they who mourn.” Jesus speaks here of those who mourn sin, who can recognize evil and with the help of God's grace are eager to turn away from it. The devil is the master of camouflage. He tries to mask the reality of evil with neutral phrases, like “terminating a pregnancy” for the snuffing out of a human life, like “pro-choice” when the little one not yet born is deprived of any choice, like “death with dignity” for the one advanced in years or troubled in health who does not know the loving care which hospice can give or the medical remedies for pain and discomfort. Our prayer tonight is that the citizens of this land, and those who have been elected to make and execute the laws of the land, may learn to see through the camouflage and come to mourn sin and turn away from it so that we as a nation might rejoice.
“Blessed are the meek.” Jesus invites us to learn from him who says of himself, “. . . learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart. . . .” (Mt. 11:29) He was gentle in whatever concerned him personally, but he was strong and clear and courageous in proclaiming his good news, the gospel. Over and over again, he insisted on principles which could be lived only with courage: at the Last Supper, a celebration of his love for us, Jesus said to the Apostles, “You will live in my love if you keep my commandments, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and live in his love.” At the heart of our following of Jesus, then, is to keep the commandments, so that we may live in the love of God. This is the path all of you here are walking this evening, as we pray for the grace to be clear and courageous in proclaiming the good news and lifting up the gospel of life about the value and dignity of every human life. We must be fearless, speaking God's truth without anger and in love.
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Happiness will come, Jesus reminds us, to those hungering and thirsting for God's holiness, to those who “seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness.” This thirst for righteousness inspires us also to pray for and to seek justice for all persons, including those yet in their mothers' wombs. For this priority in our lives we pray this evening.
“Blessed are the merciful.” To obtain God's mercy, we must show mercy. To be forgiving to others: for this we pray in the Our Father. Pope John Paul II has repeatedly reminded us that the coming Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 is to be a season of mercy and of reconciliation. What a wonderful reflection of God's mercy is in Project Rachel, which brings a sense of God's purifying and strengthening love to so many who suffer from the trauma that sets in after an abortion, sometimes years afterwards. People of all faith backgrounds can and do experience the pain which comes when they realize that one who could have been born is dead, because of a decision made perhaps in anguish. Now they can receive through Project Rachel a healing and a help which can make them healing missionaries of new hope, missionaries of the cause of life.
“Blessed are the pure of heart.” How contrary to the grain of our culture these words of Jesus run! And yet, they are words he is ready to reinforce with strength the Spirit gives for those who take them to heart. In a program called “True Love Waits,” young people are ready to explain to one another Jesus' teaching about chastity. The program took its form from the Southern Baptists, its inspiration from the gospel and its power from the Holy Spirit. In the Archdiocese where I serve more than 7,000 of our young people have made a written commitment, promising God, that they will be chaste until they marry. Some will renew this commitment permanently when they profess the vows of consecrated life or pledge themselves to celibacy as they prepare for Holy Orders. Cardinal Law and others tell me they have seen and heard this same sign of the beatitudes come alive in their dioceses. It is a sign of hope, of great hope our young people give to us.
“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.” This last of the beatitudes exhorts those of us who work for the cause of life to recall what Jesus promised to those who persevere in the face of falsehood and frustration for his sake and the sake of his teaching. He promised to be with us. He is with us. His presence helps us not to blink or bow when accusations of “ideology” or “insensitivity” are thrown our way. Again, our youth instruct us. At World Youth Day five years ago in Denver some demonstrators began to ridicule our young people and their faith. That faith inspired their response, not one of screaming back, but of prayer: they formed a circle and began to pray aloud the Rosary. The false accusers fell silent, and then they faded away.