Monday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

Maybe I’m cynical. I started to notice a throughline in global secularist bugaboos (something that causes worry). From the 1970s onward, you can take whatever the current major problem is – economic advancement, women’s rights, climate change – and the cause of it was always the same: overpopulation. The thing we should all be afraid of is children!

This is part of what Pope St. John Paul II called “The Culture of Death.” It is nothing new. Of what is the new pharaoh most fearful? The Hebrew birthrate. “Look how numerous and powerful the people of the children of Israel are growing, more so than we ourselves!” he says. He first couches it is a matter of national security to stop their increase, “otherwise, in time of war they too may join our enemies to fight against us.” In the end, however, a child is a threat to those who buy into the Culture of Death.

Jesus is the bearer of the Culture of Life. It might surprise us that he says today that he did not come for peace to bring the sword! Look closely, however. He says, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” The Lord is insisting that when you try to cling to worldly things that you have, you miss the Abundant Life He offers.

Peace for those in the Culture of Death is to pacify conflict. They do not want opposition from the truth. They can’t risk the change that new life brings. Jesus brings us peace not as an absence of conflict but as a sustaining gift of His presence welling up into eternal life (cf. Jn. 14:27). All should have access to this. It cannot be hoarded by those in power. And consequently, those with power seek to snuff out those voices. Christians must not confuse politeness with cowardice or fortitude with extremism. We must build a Culture of Life so that more may experience Abundant Life in heaven.

Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB