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Dear Friends in Christ
Respect Life: Sunday, October 6th, we celebrate Respect Life Sunday. Life begins with conception and continues to death. Respecting life includes our openness to life as husbands and wives in marriage. Every child is a tremendous blessing. Respecting life continues through nine months of pregnancy, through birth and child rearing, to all the things we learn and all the struggles we face and all the moments we most enjoy. Respecting life means every moment of every person’s life, with their successes and their failures. We respect life unto natural death. Life is precious to us, even when abilities have been lost. It is precious to us, even when crimes have been committed. God continues to love, and so must we. That is the essence. Respecting life is to love all lives even as God loves us.
Reflection: We enter any close relationship with hopes and ideals. We approach considering what is offered us through relationship, and what we might offer in return. This is true for marriage, for the Church, and for our relationship with God. Within marriage we grow to offer our gifts in all their abundance, and to receive the gifts of our spouse in return. We become one body, one spirit. In the same way we grow together as a Church, celebrating our nature as one Flesh in the Eucharist. Our relationship with God is a continuous search for unity. We seek to become so close that God’s face becomes reflected in our own. In our relationships is our salvation. Only through relationships can we discover the love necessary to free us from our fears, support us in our hopes, and allow us to dream.
1. Reflect on a time when trust in another enabled you to accept something you didn’t understand.
2. Discuss with a loved one times when you have had a particular sense of loneliness or belonging.
Prayer: Father, we bless you and thank you for loving us enough to call us sons and daughters. The love you give us bonds us more perfectly than blood. Help us to know your Son as our brother, and each other as true family. Make us one in Spirit and one in Love.
Father Jim