I’D LIKE TO MAKE THE WORLD A HOME FOR ALL

Have you noticed that almost every time our national news agencies report an egregious assault on someone’s human dignity, the TV commercials turn our attention toward how we, the people of the whole world (and their company) support these assulted human values? Remember the 1971 Coca-Cola television ad that starts with the phrase “I’d like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love” and then replaces “buy a home” with “buy a Coke” – something that just about every one of us could do for someone in the world? The message is that, if we all did that with a sincere heart, we would “furnish” the world with love. The ad showed an assmbly of people from around the world singing, and hoping that each of us watching would sing along and mean it – and do something about it!

Well, all the singing and wishing doesn’t make it happen, but we can make it happen if we would not only sing about it but, one step at a time, help ourselves and each other to DO IT by, one step at a time, helping each other take from our hearts and our local and global society the inner, anti-God, anti-socially-responsible thoughts and dispositions.

And that’s what the Church asks us to do every October – Respect Life Month – make the world a better place by making our hearts better places, more “furnished with love.” We all theoretically want a world free of racial bias, mass shootings, gender bias, etc. and, at least, theoretically, we want everyone to have access to adequate health care. We want the vulnerable, the babies, children, sick and elderly to be nurtured and cared for. We want this. So let’s use this month to move ourselves and our world closer to being a world “furnished with love” – the REAL “real thing – a world as God intended it to be.

FURNISHING THE WORLD WITH LOVE

Our Catholic response to this has to be two-pronged.  The Coca-Cola Company knew that they needed everyone’s help to furnish the world with love.  Our Catholic Church knows that, too.  The “company” part the structural Church maintains and encourges us to participate in this through our Catholic agencies which address the needs of the world:  Catholic Charities and the Catholic Relief Services, and our local Parish ministries, such as our Samaritan and Salt & Light Ministries.  These provide the “quick fixes”, very much needed, but not enough to “furnish the world with love”, the lasting, enduring love that is needed to stop egregious and less egregious acts of violence from occurring.  What will move us to be a love-furnished world is the more societal transforming fixes that are produced when we put our heads and hearts together to remove the interior barriers that are lurking there.

And that is what the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church are trying to help us to do. So let us pay some attention to these Teachings during October, Respect Life Month.  Please think about this and talk about it with your family, friends and co-workers. Using your social media platforms to do this is a great way to encourage this.

God gave us a beautiful world
and the responsibility to keep it
clean, productive and safe.

Let us put aside some time during this 2021 October
to consider what we can do individually and collectively
to strengthen and multiply initiatives, attitudes and ideologies
that Respect Life
Let’s trim away some of the things that Disrepect Life.

RESPECT LIFE MONTH

This RESPECT FOR LIFE MONTH is an opportunity to consider more deeply why every human life is valuable and to reflect on ways in which we can build a culture that supports life from conception to natural death.

Why do we need to do this?  One reason is because while we are capable of doing great things, we tend to get so involved in the hustle and bustle of everyday life that we slip into behaviors that are socially unhealthy for ourselves and for the people of our whole world. We can watch all of the TV and Internet “commercials” showing that we want the world and our towns to be more respectful, but to effectuate it, we have to take measures to remove some of the disrespectful things about ourselves and encourage others by being the truest Respectful of Life witnesses we can be.  We need to see others and they see us, – all of us, saints-in-the-making – showing signs that we care about making and keeping our society, our governments and, even the media, supportive of the well-being of all individuals.  This is how God made us, Catholics and Non-Catholics, alike: a community of Sons and Daughters of God, Sisters and Brothers to each other.

Here is a link to information about the Catholic Social Teachings. listing their major themes. The second page contains an Examination of Conscience for personally assessing where improvement is needed.  Think of how much better the world and our everyday lives would be if each year (and even more frequently) we spent some time thinking about these matters and putting some effort into making our town, state, country and world more supportive of these social practices:

• protecting the unborn
• providing assistance to the poor and homeless
• working for adequate health care for all people
• welcoming immigrants
• working against racial discrimination
• supporting efforts to limit and/or stop capital punishment
• caring for the sick and elderly
• working for peace with justice in place of war

Respect Life Month is an opportunity for us to change the world for the better, to make it more of a place where everyone feels loved and respected.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITY FOR RESPECT LIFE MONTH

Click here to see our Respect Life Challange for St. Michael’s Parishioners and for everyone who will join us.  Share this with your friends and families.  We can do this!  Do you see that the message of the Bible, from Genesis through to the New Testament proclamations of the God-become-man, are showing us that this is what God gave us the ability to do and hopes we will see our way to doing it?  Let’s make it happen – the whole world – a home furnished with God-centerd love.

Sister Loretta