Monday, June 10, 2013

Weekly HOMILY for June 9, 2013: 10th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C -- A Holistic Life Ethic

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10th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C
Terranuova Hermitage
June 9, 2013

A Holistic Life Ethic

By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato

 

 

Imagine a Society…


This morning, I would invite you to let your imagination flow along with mine for just a minute.

Imagine a society where women have no rights.  Imagine that they can own no property.

Imagine that women cannot have a house titled to their name.  Imagine that they cannot have a bank account or pension or any finances in their name.

Imagine that a woman in that society is married and her husband dies.  The house and any money that she and her husband had are now no longer hers.

Instead, they go to her husband’s closest male blood relative.  Now, if this woman and her husband have a son, then all the assets go to him, not to her.

If they do not have a son or if they have a son and he also dies, the house and savings and whatever else they have go to some other male relative of the husband – maybe his brother or nephew. 

The woman, now a widow, is left penniless. She is completely at the mercy of others. 

Now that’s the way it was in Jesus’ society.

Restoring Both to Life


And this is why today’s gospel is so very poignant.

A young man has died – the only son of a widowed mother.  It’s sad enough for this woman to have lost her son – her only son,

But she is also losing everything else and Jesus knows that she too is as good as dead.  So Jesus exerts his divine power and restores the young man to life.

In doing that, he actually restores this woman to life as well.  He makes life possible for her again and in this way he restores both of them to life.

Jesus Cherishes Life

This story shows Jesus’ consistent approach to human life.

Jesus cherishes human life.  He heals and restores to life.

He sustains human life – physically, emotionally, and spiritually; we would say, holistically.  And Jesus’ example forms the basis of our Catholic teaching about the value of life.

Our ethic is best defined as a holistic respect for human life.  We see human life as a gift from God, in fact, even as a participation in God’s life because it comes from God.

So to respect human life means that we do whatever we can to preserve, to care for, to enhance, to sustain, and to protect the life of all human beings.  Our ethic and belief is that sweeping.

Application of Life Ethic

No wonder that we are so clear about the life of an unborn child.  We see this as human life, the life of a person who has not yet come into the world on his or her own.

Whenever I baptize a newborn baby, I think of this.  This human life, this little person was so carefully formed and nourished in its mother’s womb just weeks and months ago.

Our Catholic ethic on life also moves us to provide shelter for the homeless and food for the hungry.  It moves us to figure out ways to break the death cycle of poverty.

Our ethic urges us to open up ways to give persons trapped in poverty a chance – through education or job training. It urges us to provide effective access to health care because you and I and everyone need this.

Our ethic calls us to respect even the life of one who has taken the life of another.  And it calls us even to respect the life of those we call enemies.

Our just war teaching calls us to look at the number of soldiers and civilians – of our enemy – who will be lost in war.  This too is part of our human life ethic.  

A Conclusion

So, our Catholic ethic is holistic.

It extends to the human life of all persons.  I suppose for this reason it is so difficult to live and embrace fully.

So, we work at it and do our best.  I do believe that one caution is worth noting.

We make a mistake if we focus on just one area of life.  We make a mistake when we single out one life issue to the exclusion of the rest. 

When we do this, we actually reduce our positive ethic of life – and it is a positive ethic.  We reduce it to an anti-abortion or anti-poverty or anti-war ethic and this ends up having a negative effect on every aspect of our ethic.

Jesus in the gospel restores life to both persons – the son and his widowed mother.  We too are to care for the life of all who are before us today.