From the Friars: Life “In the Beginning”

The Pro-Life Congress in Lawrence takes place on May 31st – June 1st. I invite all of you to attend. Please be generous in extending this warm invitation to all those you know, so that we may best represent our community regarding the most important topic of our Catholic faith: our conception of human life, and how it comes into existence “in the beginning”.

One of the speakers for the Eucharistic Congress will be Bishop Mark Seitz, from El Paso, Texas! On August 3rd, 2019, one of the most brutal acts of premeditated violence took place in his diocese, which took the life of 23 immigrants and seriously injured 22 more. Patrick Wood Crusius, 24 years old, received 90 consecutive life sentences for his deliberate action, he himself confessing that he intended to kill everyone he shot. Judged publicly as a hate crime, Patrick Crusius uploaded to the internet—just minutes before the crime—his manifesto entitled “The Inconvenient Truth”.

Bishop Seitz’s response was to write a Pastoral Letter written to the People of God entitled: Night Will Be No More (Rev. 22:5). Jesus’ Resurrection was the only truth that can shed light on such a dark event in United States history. He says that ‘racism’ and ‘white supremacy’ were not part of God’s original plan, “in the beginning”, but are a consequence of sin. Human life is a gift from God “in the beginning”. By faith we believe that God created the heavens and the earth from nothing (ex nihilo). Thus, it is an act of faith to believe that the human soul is created by God at conception.

Structures of sin in our society seek to abolish faith and to label human life as “The Inconvenient Truth”. Their public ‘manifesto’ has deliberately killed millions, a sure sign of the father of lies (Jn. 8:44). How we view life “in the beginning” shapes how we view life at all its stages. If God created ‘space’ and ‘time’ out of nothing, He can surely create ‘space’ in our hearts and ‘time’ in our busy day to respond to the many immigrants who continue to flood into this Archdiocese. We must act in faith!

Please come to the Pro-Life Congress and pray for the respect of life “in the beginning”.

–Fr. Francis