In his Epistle to the Ephesians (1:3-5), Paul writes that God had chosen us before the foundation of the world!

This startling truth reveals that God has known, loved, and called us from before all time.

We are not an accident, a highly evolved animal, or a random collision of circumstances.

Each one of us, made in the image and likeness of God, is a beloved son or daughter of Him.

We bear a dignity and value given by the Lord, and we are created to love Him, to serve Him in this life, and to be happy forever with Him in Heaven.

All according to God’s plan

G.K. Chesterton, a noted British author and convert to Catholicism, said that every person is a great not-might-have-been.

Ponder the number of circumstances that had to align just right for each of us to be born and to live until this very moment.

Our grandparents and parents had to meet, get married, and have the children they did.

The Lord has protected us from so many unknown dangers, potential accidents, and destructive circumstances.

My father met my mother because he dropped something heavy on his foot at the factory where he worked in 1951 and went to see the nurse, who was my mother.

If he had not suffered that accident, my five brothers and I would not exist.

Change one small event in our family timeline, and we disappear from existence!

Celebrating and caring for life

October is Respect Life Month, as the Church calls attention to the beauty of human life and all the forces of violence and evil that war against that radiance.

Poverty, war, abuse, and starvation come to mind as global scourges that we seek to erase.

The work of the Church with refugees, the homeless, and the imprisoned is a wonder to behold.

Because human life begins at conception, the Church seeks to eradicate abortion — the willful and violent destruction of the unborn child in the womb — with particular prayer and dedication.

The right to life is the first and primary gift of the Lord to every person from the beginning.

Pregnancy help centers offer women in crisis pregnancies medical services, emotional support, material resources, and follow-up assistance so that every mother can choose the life within her.

The key factor that leads a woman to choose abortion is a lack of support from the father of the baby, her family, and friends.

If the father accompanies the mother through the pregnancy with love and care, her chances of choosing life increase dramatically.

This loving support makes all the difference.

These services offered to mothers in crisis help them to choose relationship over isolation, trust over fear, life over death, and love over indifference.

If God has loved and chosen every person from all eternity, then His will is the conception, birth, life, and vocation of everyone, regardless of the circumstances of how we came to be.

Being grateful for life

In It’s a Wonderful Life, George has reached such a point of despair that he is thinking of suicide until his guardian angel shows him what his loved ones and his town would have been like if he had never existed, how worse so many things would have been.

We will never know the impact of one life until we pass over to eternity, but all of us are part of God’s great plan of salvation.

If we could speak to unborn children in the womb, would they not all say, “Let me be born! Let me live. Let me know the wonder and glory of my existence. I want to walk and run, learn to read, watch the beauty of the sunset, fall in love, dance, and sing. I want to love my parents, and I want to love God!”

Would they not all say that? This truth is why we will not only resist abortion but also build a culture of life, where every person is welcomed, nourished, loved, and helped.

In Luke’s Gospel (7:11-17), Jesus stops the funeral procession of the dead son of the widow of Nain.

He touches the casket, which would have made Him ritually unclean in Jewish law.

The bearers stop in shock, and the Lord raises the young man back to life and gives him to his mother.

Jesus is always interrupting funeral processions; disturbing the slow, sad march to sin and death; and breaking through our darkness with the light of the Resurrection.

As Christians, we glorify God for the beautiful gift of our life, asking Him to send His mighty power of Resurrection and salvation upon our country and world; to break the deadly processions of violence, hatred, and indifference; and to let the Light of the World shine on a people who walk in the shadows of death.