"At Every Moment of Existence, Life is Sacred"

We are studying Evangelium Vitae, The Gospel of Life by Pope John Paul 2 in our parish pro- life group. In chapter 3, he refers to the Didache, the apostles teaching from 75 AD to illustrate that the Catholic Church has always spoken against abortion from its earliest days continuing to the present . It remains the one Church that has held this position unwavering since the time of the apostles.
When I was an evangelical, I never could understand why Catholics were leading the fight to defend life, if they were wrong about so many other things. When I asked this to a friend, he said: "They got that one thing right." I have since found out they were right about many other things as well, including their stance on artificial contraception which contributes to the abortion mentality as predicted by Pope Paul in the 1960's.


From the beginning, the living Tradition of the Church-as shown by the Didache, the most ancient non-biblical Christian writing-categorically repeated the commandment "You shall not kill": "There are two ways, a way of life and a way of death; there is a great difference between them... In accordance with the precept of the teaching: you shall not kill ... you shall not put a child to death by abortion nor kill it once it is born ... The way of death is this: ... they show no compassion for the poor, they do not suffer with the suffering, they do not acknowledge their Creator, they kill their children and by abortion cause God's creatures to perish; they drive away the needy, oppress the suffering, they are advocates of the rich and unjust judges of the poor; they are filled with every sin. May you be able to stay ever apart, o children, from all these sins!". The texts of Sacred Scripture never address the question of deliberate abortion and so do not directly and specifically condemn it. But they show such great respect for the human being in the mother's womb that they require as a logical consequence that God's commandment "You shall not kill" be extended to the unborn child as well.

Human life is sacred and inviolable at every moment of existence, including the initial phase which precedes birth. All human beings, from their mothers' womb, belong to God who searches them and knows them, who forms them and knits them together with his own hands, who gazes on them when they are tiny shapeless embryos and already sees in them the adults of tomorrow whose days are numbered and whose vocation is even now written in the "book of life" (cf. Ps 139: 1, 13-16). There too, when they are still in their mothers' womb-as many passages of the Bible bear witness⁶⁰-they are the personal objects of God's loving and fatherly providence. (from Evangelium Vitae)

When God looks at those eight cells in the above picture, He sees a human life from beginning to end as well as an immortal soul that goes on for eternity. Would that we see things from His perspective. We begin our meeting by the praying the rosary for the end to abortion and end with this prayer to Mary, whose unborn child was the Savior of the world.

O Mary,
bright dawn of the new world,
Mother of the living,
to you do we entrust the cause of life
Look down, O Mother,
upon the vast numbers
of babies not allowed to be born,
of the poor whose lives are made difficult,
of men and women
who are victims of brutal violence,
of the elderly and the sick killed
by indifference or out of misguided mercy.

Grant that all who believe in your Son
may proclaim the Gospel of life
with honesty and love
to the people of our time.

Obtain for them the grace
to accept that Gospel
as a gift ever new,
the joy of celebrating it with gratitude
throughout their lives
and the courage to bear witness to it
resolutely, in order to build,
together with all people of good will,
the civilization of truth and love,
to the praise and glory of God,
the Creator and lover of life.