Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
As we enter these days of the Sacred Triduum— in which we celebrate the great mysteries of our redemption—we see all around us a deeply disturbing disrespect for human life. This month, during an eight-day period in Philadelphia, there were 44 shootings, with 78 homicides so far this year. On Saturday evening, the body of a missing nine-year-old Florida girl was discovered. She had been abducted, asphyxiated and buried by her killer. Monday we learned of the carnage at a high school in Minnesota by a troubled teen. Ten were killed, at least 14 wounded.
On the same day, as the U.S. bishops launched a campaign to end the use of the death penalty in the United States, 3,500 inmates were on death row in 38 state and federal prisons. Since 1976 more than 1,000 people have been executed in the United States. Since Sunday, four American military families have lost loved ones in Iraq, bringing this month’s total to 27. Since the conflict began, there have been–in addition to civilian deaths– 1,700 military fatalities. Tuesday and Wednesday, courts on multiple occasions refused to order a feeding tube reinserted to provide food and water to Terri Schiavo, who has suffered the consequences of severe brain damage since 1990. If there is no further intervention on her behalf, she will dehydrate and starve to death.
As we approach the observance of Good Friday, the day on which Jesus was brutally scourged and crucified, our world today is troubled by violence, acts of terrorism, war, and every kind of threat against human life—at its very beginnings and at every stage thereafter. These acts, whether they occur in our own region or in some far-off part of the world, affect all of us. They affect all of us because through baptism we are brothers and sisters and members of one body, the Body of Christ. When one member of the Body of Christ suffers, the whole body suffers.
The Body of Christ is suffering. These attacks against human life are tragic but attain a special poignancy during this holy season. We know that life is sacred because it is from God. Human life also has special dignity by virtue of the Incarnation in which God himself became man and gave us a share in his own divine life. It has special dignity because the human person is created by God in his own image and is destined for eternal happiness. Human life also has special value because of Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice on the Cross.
Jesus himself said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). Human life must be reverenced at every stage of existence and no one has the right to take it away. The disrespect for human life that we see around us—and, indeed, all sin, including our own—is a darkness that permeates today’s world, just as darkness settled over Golgotha on that first Good Friday. Today’s sins against life are really a fresh denial of Christ. These sins pierce anew the hands and side of Christ, who suffered and died for all our offenses, past, present and future.
The good news is that Jesus overcomes our sin. The Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, wrote in Salvifici Doloris (“On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering”): “In his suffering, sins are cancelled out precisely because he alone as the only-begotten Son could take them upon himself, accept them with that love for the Father which overcomes the evil of every sin; in a certain sense he annihilates this evil in the spiritual space of the relationship between God and humanity, and fills this space with good.” (SD, 17).
Indeed, the darkness, despair and apparent hopelessness of Good Friday give way to a wonderful reality: on the third day, as we proclaim in the Creed, Jesus rose triumphantly from the dead. By his death, Jesus liberates us from the power of sin. By his resurrection, he gives us the promise of eternal life. His resurrection bathes our world in the splendor of new light, a radiant Easter light that overcomes the darkness of sin. We need not despair because the resurrection affirms that our faith is not in vain. The resurrection reminds us that just as Jesus rose from the dead and lives forever, so will those who those who place their hope in him.
The resurrection also reminds us at a time when there is such a disregard for human life that our God is a God of life. As St. Gregory of Nyssa said of Christ’s resurrection, “The reign of life has begun. The tyranny of death is ended. A new birth has taken place, a new life has come, a new order of existence has appeared, our very nature has been transformed.”
May the grace of Easter help us live in a way worthy of our baptism. May Easter joy radiate from each of us so that it transforms our world in a way that will foster a respect for the dignity of God-given life.
Fraternally,
Most Reverend Joseph A. Galante, D.D., J.C.D.
Bishop of Camden