This year, Respect for Life Week (RFLW) will run from October 4 – 11. This is an Archdiocesan event which was embraced after it was recommended during the 3rd sitting of Synod in 2009. The theme this year is: Transforming society to reflect Gospel values. This is in keeping with the 3rd Pastoral Priority: Regenerating the Moral and Spiritual Values of our Society.
By our baptism, we are called to preach the Gospel in and out of season. The Gospel call is not only for personal transformation, but for each baptised person to seek to transform society. As St John Paul II said in his Address to the Pontifical Council for Culture, March 14, 1997: “Every culture needs to be transformed by Gospel values.”
With general elections fast approaching, let us raise our awareness of what we need to do to transform society so that we will know how to phrase our questions to the politicians who will be knocking on our doors.
Reflect on the parable of the sower in today’s Gospel, Matthew 13: 1-23. Into which of the four categories do you fall – on the edge of the path, on patches of rock, in thorns, or in rich soil? Let us strive to be the ones who, because we received the seed in rich soil, hear the word and understand it, and yield a harvest and produce “now a hundredfold, now sixty, now thirty”. To truly understand the word, we must see-judge-act through the lenses of our faith; we must be grounded in our faith, only then will we open our hearts and minds to the word of God. And remember, the sowing of the seed is not the end. We must constantly water that seed. Ongoing faith formation is essential if we are to act as leaven in society.
Fr Desmond de Sousa from Goa rightly stated two weeks ago that “social transformation in the direction of the values of the kingdom of God is a faith commitment… The Church continues the mission of Jesus which requires it to structure the Kingdom values of freedom, fellowship and justice based on an intimate, personal relationship with God, as well as making contributions to promote these values in the ordering of human society. The struggle for a new society is therefore a constitutive element of the Church’s evangelising mission. As the Synod of Bishops in 1971 said, ‘Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation’.
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“The Church’s specific contribution to a new society consists of inserting the values of the Gospel into human relationships, both personal and structural. Negatively, this will mean prophetically denouncing whatever structures militate against human freedom, fellowship and justice. Positively it will mean joining with all people of good will in promoting those values in society.”
In his Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel (November 2013), Pope Francis highlighted the need for “a greater penetration of Christian values in the social, political and economic sectors… (for) a real commitment to applying the Gospel to the transformation of society” (102).
CCSJ is giving advance notice of the dates of RFLW so that parishes, schools, Archdiocesan Departments, Ecclesial Communities, etc. can plan ways of observing the week. The feature speakers at the Sir Ellis Clarke Memorial Conference on October 4 will be His Grace Archbishop Joseph Harris, Timothy Hamel-Smith, and me.
Other events so far include a Prayer Session to be led by Eternal Light Community at St Charles RC Church, Tunapuna, on October 6 and a prayer vigil, being organised by Emmanuel Community for October 10. Sr Juliet Rajah and the Catechetical team will produce a Prayer Supplement in the Catholic News. Events involving other departments/organisations will be publicised in due course.
Please observe the Week as part of your plan for implementing the 3rd Pastoral Priority. The Parish Link Coordinators and Vicariate Link Coordinators are willing to assist you.
