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Only the grace of the Holy Spirit can open our spiritual eyes and ears. Even so, it is not easy. We resist. We evade. We rationalize. We harden our hearts. Think of St. Augustine’s conversion described in his Confessions where he says to God, “You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped and now I pant for you. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst. you touched me and I burned for your peace.”

If Christ’s Name is emblazoned in our hearts, unworthy and limited as we are, we can be confident that his truth and love will shine in us and through us, spreading truth and goodness, joy and hope, peace and good will, no matter who we are, where we are, or what we may be facing.

When we allow the Spirit to fill our hearts with Jesus’ self-giving love, then we begin to love as he loved and to live as he lived – not perfectly – but enough that we can find the wherewithal to believe, to hope, and to endure, even when the road is winding, the fog hangs low, and the trumpet is uncertain.

Embracing the Scriptures as truly the Word of God, as truly words of spirit and life, let us now proceed to lift up our hearts as the Lord gives himself for us anew, in the reenactment of his death and resurrection and in our reception of his Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist.

Let us reject the tools of the culture of death. Let us not “fight fire with fire.” Instead, let us immerse ourselves in the Gospel of Life, allowing the Incarnate Lord Jesus to shed his incomparable light on us and on the dignity of every human life, on both mother and child, on the frail elderly, and on all those who are vulnerable and struggling.

This evening, let us be clear. For us as Catholics, justice is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of reason.

The lesson of life’s beauty, learned best in the family circle, deserves to be writ large across the whole of our society and all of us have a part in doing so.