Pope at General Audience: welcome
life as God’s gift
Pope Francis continues his catechesis on the Commandments
during Wednesday’s General Audience saying that welcoming life as God’s gift
corrects a vision of life interpreted as a problem to be eliminated.
By Sr Bernadette Mary Reis, fsp
During the Wednesday General Audience, Pope Francis
reflected on the Fifth Commandment: You shall not kill. When life is welcomed
as a gift from God, he said, the vision of interpreting life through the lens
of eliminating problems can be corrected.
Value of life
The reading from Wisdom 11:24-26 provided the inspiration
for the Pope’s remarks. Pope Francis reaffirmed that the Fifth Commandment is
concise and to the point. It is “a defending wall for the foundational value in
human relations: the value of life”, he said.
Gift of God, not a problem
Pope Francis then noted a contradictory approach to life:
the suppression of “human life in the mother’s womb in order to safeguard other
values”.
It is not right to 'take out' a human being, no matter
how little, to resolve a problem. That is like hiring a hitman to resolve a
problem.
Fear is the culprit
Fear leads to violence and rejection, the Pope continued.
Welcoming life as a gift of God leads to accepting life in all of its
expressions. Pope Francis mentioned that parents are in need of true support
should they discover that the baby they are expecting will be disabled. Then he
said,
A sick child, …just as an elderly person, needs
assistance…. He or she who is presented as a problem is in reality God’s gift
who can draw me out of my self-centeredness to make me grow in love.
God’s love is the measure for life
The world’s idols prompt people to reject life, the Pope
said. Pope Francis listed these idols: money, power, and success. He called
them “mistaken parameters by which to evaluate life”. Whereas “the only
authentic measure for life is love, the love that God has for it!”
Secret of God’s love
The secret of love was shown in how God’s own Son lived, the
Pope continued.
He became man to the point of assuming rejection, weakness,
poverty and pain on the cross. In every sick child, in every weak elderly
person, in every desperate migrant, in every life that is fragile and
threatened, Christ is seeking our heart so as to disclose the joy of love.
Therefore, the Pope concluded:
Do not despise life! … We need to say to so many young
people: do not despise your existence! Stop rejecting the work of God! You are
a work of God! … For the Gospel says that 'God so loved the world that he gave
his only Son so that whoever believes in him might not die, but have eternal
life' (John 3:16).
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