Weekly Meditation
Earlier in the summer (July 15-20) Pope Benedict XVI met with over 350,000 people from 170 countries for the World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia. It was another successful and grace-filled encounter for all of them -- pope and young people.
The World Youth Day celebrations were initiated by Pope John Paul in 1986. The only one held in North America was in Denver in 1993. I was privileged to participate accompanying youth from the Diocese of Jackson. Some of the words in his homily still challenge all of us today.
This marvelous world -- so loved by he Father that he sent his only Son for its salvation -- is the theater of a never-ending battle being waged for our dignity and identity as free, spiritual beings....In our own century, as at no other time in history, the "culture of death" has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: genocide, "final solutions", "ethnic cleansings," and the massive "taking of lives of human beings even before they reach the natural point of death."
Vast sectors of society are confused about what is right and what is wrong, and are at the mercy of those with the power to "create" opinion and impose it on others. The family especially is under attack. And the sacred character of human life denied. Naturally, the weakest members of society are the most at risk: the unborn, children, the sick, the handicapped. the old, the poor and the unemployed, the immigrant and refugee, the South of the world!
Young pilgrims, Christ needs you to enlighten the world and to show it the "path to life." The challenge is to make the Church's "yes" to Life concrete and effective. The struggle will be long, and it needs each one of you. Place your intelligence, your talents, your enthusiasm, your compassion and your fortitude at the service of life!
- Pope John Paul II, Denver, 1993
Bishop William R. Houck"
President Emeritus, Catholic Extension