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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.
