Pro-life is not pro-war
- From: Steve Hayes <hayesmstw@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:03:42 GMT
Archpastoral Message of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox
Church in America for Sanctity of Life Sunday
Posted 01/11
January 18, 2009
To the Venerable Hierarchs, Clergy, Monastics and Faithful of the Orthodox
Church in America
Dearly Beloved in Christ:
The Lord Jesus Christ emerged from the waters of Baptism, and heard the Word
of the Father: "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The Lord's
word to each and every human being, to each and every being which bears the
image and can actualize the likeness of God, is the same: You are my beloved.
It is the very Word of God who, by His incarnation and assumption of our whole
life and our whole condition, affirms and blesses the ultimate value of every
human person--and indeed of creation as a whole. He filled it with His own
being, uniting us to Himself, making us His own Body, transfiguring and
deifying our lives, and raising us up to God our Father. He affirms and
fulfills us, not simply as individuals seeking happiness, but rather as
persons with an infinite capacity to love and be loved, and thus fulfills us
through His own divine personhood in communion.
Our life as human beings is not given to us to live autonomously and
independently. This, however, is the great temptation: to deny our personhood,
by the depersonalization of those around us, seeing them only as objects that
are useful and give us pleasure, or are obstacles to be removed or overcome.
This is the essence of our fallenness, our brokenness. With this comes the
denial of God, and loss of spiritual consciousness. It has resulted in
profound alienation and loneliness, a society plummeting into the abyss of
nihilism and despair. There can be no sanctity of life when nothing is sacred,
nothing is holy. Nor can there be any respect for persons in a society that
accepts only autonomous individualism: there can be no love, only selfish
gratification. This, of course, is delusion. We are mutually interdependent.
First as Christians, but even more so, as human beings, we must repent and
turn to God and one another, seeking forgiveness and reconciliation. Only this
will heal the soul. Only by confronting our bitterness and resentment, and
finding forgiveness for those who have hurt us, can we be free from the rage
that binds us in despair. Repentance is not about beating ourselves up for our
errors and feeling guilty; that is a sin in and of itself! Guilt keeps us
entombed in self-pity. All sin is some form of self-centeredness, selfishness.
Repentance is the transformation of our minds and hearts as we turn away from
our sin, and turn to God, and to one another. Repentance means to forgive.
Forgiveness does not mean to justify someone's sin against us. When we resent
and hold a grudge, we objectify the person who hurt us according to their
action, and erect a barrier between us and them. And, we continue to beat
ourselves up with their sin. To forgive means to overcome that barrier, and
see that there is a person who, just like us, is hurt and broken, and to
overlook the sin and embrace him or her in love. When we live in a state of
repentance and reconciliation, we live in a communion of love, and overcome
all the barriers that prevented us from fulfilling our own personhood.
All the sins against humanity, abortion, euthanasia, war, violence, and
victimization of all kinds, are the results of depersonalization. Whether it
is "the unwanted pregnancy", or worse, "the fetus" rather than "my son" or "my
daughter;" whether it is "the enemy" rather than Joe or Harry (maybe Ahmed or
Mohammed), the same depersonalization allows us to fulfill our own selfishness
against the obstacle to my will. How many of our elderly, our parents and
grandparents, live forgotten in isolation and loneliness? How many Afghan,
Iraqi, Palestinian and American youths will we sacrifice to agonizing injuries
and deaths for the sake of our political will? They are called "soldiers," or
"enemy combatants" or "civilian casualties" or any variety of other euphemisms
to deny their personhood. But ask their parents or children! Pro-war is NOT
pro-life! God weeps for our callousness.
We have to extend a hand to those suffering from their sins, what ever they
are. There is no sin that cannot be forgiven, save the one we refuse to accept
forgiveness for. Abortion not only destroys the life of the infant; it rips
the soul out of the mother (and the father!). It becomes a sin for which a
woman torments herself for years, sinking deeper into despair and
self-condemnation and self-hatred. But there is forgiveness, if only she will
ask. We must seek out and embrace the veterans who have seen such horrors, and
committed them. They need to be able to repent and accept forgiveness, so that
their souls, their memories, and their lives, might be healed.
Most of all, we must restore the family: not just the nuclear family, but the
multi-generational family which lives together, supports one another, and
teaches each one what it means to be loved and to be a person. It teaches what
forgiveness and reconciliation are. And it embraces and consoles the prodigals
who have fallen. In this, the real sanctity of life is revealed, from
pregnancy to old age. And in the multi-generational family each person finds
value. This is the most important thing that we can possibly do.
The Blessed Mother Teresa said that the greatest poverty of the industrialized
world is loneliness. Let us reach out to those isolated, alienated, alone, and
in despair, finding in them someone most worthy of love; and in turn, we will
find in ourselves that same love and value, and know indeed that God speaks to
us in the depths of our souls, You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased.
With love in Christ,
SIGNATURE
+JONAH
Archbishop of Washington and New York
Metropolitan of All America and Canada
http://www.oca.org/news/1750
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