Good Shepherd Parish, March 12, 2016
Homily Father Hezuk Shroff
Today, we come together from all parts of the Archdiocese of Ottawa
to celebrate this pro-life Mass and to pray for a restoration of the culture of
life in this country and throughout the world. Sometimes, a Mass with a prolife
theme is seen as being simply a Mass against abortion. But we are
united today not primarily to pray against something; rather to pray for
something much greater. We are all here this morning because we believe
that all human life is sacred, from natural conception to natural death. We
do not buy into the lie that we are somehow against women’s rights, or
against freedom: we believe very strongly in free will, because we know that
we were created free by God. However, we also know that there is a
difference between freedom and licence. Freedom, we know, is always
ordered to the good, and one can never use the argument of freedom to do
something that is intrinsically evil or contrary to the good. No one would
stand up and defend a rapist’s “freedom to rape” or a thief’s “freedom to
steal.” No one would say that we should be “free to hate” or “free to lie” or
“free to hurt” another human being intentionally. Then why is it that so many
in today’s society can’t understand the fact there there is no such thing as
the “freedom to kill”? When a person takes an innocent human life at will,
he is implying that his so-called “freedom to kill” trumps the other person’s
freedom to live. But there is no such thing as the freedom to kill, since
freedom can never be used to justify doing evil. Freedom is ordered to truth,
to charity, and therefore also to the good.
We are blessed to be gathered together this morning in this Church of
the Good Shepherd (and not just because of the pastor who is assigned
here!). We are here because we believe in life, and it is Christ who told His
disciples, “The good shepherd is the one who lays down his life for his
sheep.” In other words, the good shepherd stands up for what is true and
just and noble (the dignity of life, that each one of his sheep possesses),
and willfully even undergoes death if necessary in order to protect their life.
The good shepherd, in that sense, is unequivocally pro-life. And of course,
we are not just talking about sheep here. We are using a metaphor to
describe human souls. The good shepherd will willfully give up his own life
so that those souls entrusted to his spiritual care might be saved.
The first reading from today’s Mass is rather providential. It is a
prophetic passage from the book of Jeremiah. The one who is speaking is
Christ himself (through the mouth of the prophet). “I was like a gentle lamb
led to the slaughter. I did not know it was against me that they devised
schemes, saying, ‘Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from
the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more.” This
prophecy is a prediction of the Passion of Christ, in which Our Lord would
be led “like a gentle lamb to the slaughter.” But those who devised such a
scheme against the Lord did not do so because they loved evil or death
perse. They crucified Our Lord all the while believing that somehow they were
doing good. No one chooses evil for the sake of evil itself; they choose evil
because they mistakenly see it as a form of good. That is what the great
theologian St. Thomas Aquinas says. It is the human will that chooses. And
the object of the human will is some good. Therefore, the human will cannot
deliberately choose an evil; what it does do is choose something because it
What does this mean for us who seek to restore a culture of life in this
has an aspect of goodness. In other words, the human will can only choose
what it believes to be good. Saint Thomas summarizes this by saying that
whatever we will, we will sub ratione boni (which in Latin means literally
“under the reason of good”).
country? It means that we must understand why those who oppose life do
so. They are not opposing life because they prefer death. They are not
saying that death is better than life — at least not in an absolute sense. But
very often, they are placing some other good above the most fundamental
good that is life itself. What is that other good that they place above life?
For some, it is freedom. For others, it is convenience or comfort or
pleasure. For others still, it is compassion. But the problem is that theirs is a
misunderstood notion of freedom, and a false view of human compassion.
Those who seek to end life at its conception are very often motivated by an
excessive love for comfort and convenience (a newborn child, after all,
requires much sacrifice and hard work). Or else they see “the right to abort”
as a freedom to do whatever they want, regardless of any moral standards
or norms, or any sense of basic human decency. Those who promote
euthanasia, on the other hand, play the trump card of human compassion. It
is wrong for others to suffer without us trying to do something to alleviate
their suffering. And what is the easiest thing to do? In their eyes, the easiest
thing to do is to terminate that person’s life. Killing in an easy solution.
Suicide sometimes appears as the easiest way to end human suffering. But
is it the right way?
The Church has a very important role to play in this regard. The
Church is not against human liberty, nor does she shun the importance of
human compassion. Think of all those religious orders (especially orders of
consecrated women) who give their lives to serving the suffering, the sick,
the poor. Such forms of social charity were born in the heart of the Church.
But the Church knows the difference between true and false freedom
between true and false compassion. The Church knows what true freedom
is, and what authentic compassion involves. True freedom requires the
ability to choose what is good and right and just; an authentic
compassion is one that aids and accompanies one who is suffering or ill
or dying, rather than hastening that person’s death.
The modern-day, scientific world seeks quick fixes and instant
solutions to everything: even to the challenges of human free will and
suffering. But the Church, following the Gospel of Jesus Christ, gives us the
only real solution. The only real solution to the problems of human liberty
and of suffering is love. The world says that we should kill someone
whom we love (out of compassion); but the Church says that we should
love someone to death (in other words, love someone who is suffering, up
until the moment of natural death).
The Catholic Church is the last institution standing in the world today
that is unequivocally and unconditionally in favour of life. And the reason
that she is so totally and completely pro-life is because she is at the same
time uncompromisingly pro-love! The Church alone teaches that man must
love until it hurts; that he must love until he can love no more. Selfsacrificial,
self-denying love! Mother Teresa of Calcutta (whose decree of
canonisation will be signed by Pope Francis in just a few days — on March
15)…Mother Teresa often said to her Missionaries of Charity: “Sisters, you
must love the poorest of the poor until it hurts. If you do not love until it
hurts, then you haven’t loved with the Heart of Jesus!” This love, of which
the Saint from Culcutta was so thoroughly imbued, is so essential to the
Christian message that it has become the very symbol of Christianity itself.
What is the most recognisable symbol of the Christian Faith? It is the Cross!
Jesus Christ shows us that true love and authentic compassion are to be
found nowhere else than on the Cross. The world cannot understand
suffering and pain, because it cannot understand the deepest meaning of
the Christian message which is this: Love, in its greatest expression,
involves self-sacrifice and self-denial. It involves dying to oneself, as Jesus
died on the Cross! That is why the world rejects Christ and why it rejects
this radical love; that is why the world chooses death over life! Because it
simply cannot see that suffering and love are not mutually exclusive, but
rather that they go hand-in-hand. The world cannot see this because it has
become blind to God. That is why it has no problem with abortion, with
contraception, with euthanasia.
Our role, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is two-fold: firstly, to pray
that the world may see; and secondly, to help the world to see. In other
words, it is through prayer and through education that we will be able to
restore a culture of life. The only way of doing this (and I am not, by any
means, exaggerating — it is truly the only way)….the only way of doing
this is by bringing the world back to God, by bringing the world to Jesus
Christ, for He alone can open the eyes of the blind and grant that they may
see. And when He does that, then the world will finally be able to see that
all human life is sacred and precious, from natural conception to natural
death.
May God bless you all, and may Our Lady, the one who bore the
Author of Life itself, give you strength and courage as you fight to preserve
the dignity of all human life. In the Name + of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.