Life - La VIE

Dear Children, Grand children, family and friends,

When I opened my mail on New Year’s day, the following is what I read: “… this baby is going to be born today on the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God (New Year's Day). Please keep the baby and me in your prayers.”

For ‘Thanksgiving’ 2006, I wrote: “I confess that I never thanked God enough for giving me the abundance I did not deserve.”

For Christmas 2006, my post on the blog was about ‘La Vie’ (Life)

To be given the gift of a new life to start a ‘New Year’ - Indeed, how much more spoilt could we be by God? What have we done to deserve so much love from our Father in heaven?

How eternally thankful should we be to God to have been born within a family that values and honors the sanctity of life and looks to God as the source and of ALL life with absolute power over it.

As I was reflecting on this wondrous gift that can neither be purchased nor duplicated at any cost without the will of God, I found some statements by Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II.

As your father and grandfather, my gift to you in gratitude for God’s (additional – 18th grand child) gift to our family is to share their comments with you.

“On October 4, 1965, when addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Paul VI challenged his audience: "You must make it possible to have enough bread for humanity's table; and not favor the artificial control of births -- something irrational -- to decrease the number of guests at the banquet of life."

"On other occasions, in a past which, hopefully, has been overcome for good, certain nations went to war to seize the riches of their neighbors. Is it not, perhaps, a new form of war that imposes a restrictive demographic policy on certain nations so that they will not claim their rightful share of the earth's goods?"

Notwithstanding "the attacks against the family and human life," he said, "there are numerous families that continue to be faithful, despite the difficulties, to their human and Christian vocation."

These families "react in face of the attacks of a certain contemporary hedonist and materialist culture, and are organizing themselves to offer together a response full of hope," as reflected in the growth of pro-life movements.

The deepest reason for happiness a person can have is to know he is loved by God with a mother's love, says John Paul II.

"As a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you," God says in the biblical passage commented on by Pope John Paul II.

Earlier, in the Book of Isaiah, in Chapter 49, the Lord asks: "Can a woman forget her infant, be without tenderness of the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you."

"Only in the family, based on matrimony, is there hope for the grandeur, dignity and future of humanity."

"Families are the architects of society, and this should not be replaced by any political ideology,"

The family is the patrimony of humanity, and not limited to religion.

"Today the very identity of the family is subjected to dehumanizing threats,"

Mentalities are spreading that favor "divorce, contraception, abortion, denying in fact the authentic sentiment of love and attempting, in the last analysis, against human life, by not recognizing every human being's full right to life,"

Thank You Dear Lord for loving us so very much and comforting us all with the gift of LIFE through Terry and Christine. The gift of Finnian Patrick as he is in turn loved and comforted by his mother, father, 5 brothers and sisters on earth, one sister in heaven and all the family and friends!