Just as Our Lady of Guadalupe stepped into a culture of death in 16th century Mexico, so now she guides our steps as we confront a culture of death in 21st century America. A culture of death is a culture that has lost its hope, its vision for the future. The pro-life movement, by contrast, is young, alive, forward-looking. Ever the Mother of Christ who is our Hope, Mary helps us not only to engage in the necessary political action that is our right as citizens but also to bear witness by word and deed to a message of hope, the message that no human being is an accident, for as Pope Benedict proclaimed, no one of us ‘some casual and meaningless product of evolution… each of us is the result of a thought of God…each of us is willed, each of is loved, each of us is necessary’ (Benedict XVI, Inaugural Homily).
… Walking with Mary we bear witness to the Gospel of Life not only by what we say but also by the love we show for unborn children and their expectant mothers, for the poor, the needy, the stranger and the outcast, for the frail elderly and the handicapped – all whose lives are threatened. Joined to Mary, the Mother of the Living, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and sustained by the prayers of Pope John Paul the Great, and united to Pope Benedict XVI, may we indeed be messengers of love and builders of a culture of life!
-- Archbishop William Lori of Bridgeport
Homily at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
Jan. 24, 2011
March for Life
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