By Christopher Lenart, a parishioner at Ss. Peter and Paul Parish, Naperville, who is posting once a month, every month, on this blog, writing about faith-related matters, To contact Christopher, email him at clenart@comcast.net. To learn more about him, go to his website: https://www.disabilityawareness.us/
This past Sunday we heard beautiful readings about life, marriage, and children. As I read these readings, I was thinking of what God was hoping this world would be. Did He ever think that we would turn this world into such an evil and self-centered place? I don’t think so.
In the first reading, we can see that God made every animal and noticed that the man didn’t have a partner who could help him, so God took a rib from him and made another being into the man’s image. The man called the being woman. This is so amazing how He wanted the man to not be alone. Fast forward to this age now where the institution of marriage is falling apart. With that being said, the troubling thing is that we are losing the understanding of what a human being means.
So what does a human being mean? Everyone should treat one another equal and listen to each one fairly. You can have different viewpoints but one can’t tear down another person completely. I think the most important is not to rush to judgment. Jesus always said to love one another as I love you. Are we doing that? It doesn’t seem that we are.
In the Gospel of Mark, we heard that it is unlawful to divorce someone but Jesus said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another she commits adultery.” We see that God is not the center of people’s lives. They do whatever feels good and that is not how God wants us to live. The last few weeks we have seen people getting mad about alleged incidents of sexual assault. Any kind of assault is always wrong. Yes, it was wrong when Jesus was alive, 2,000 years ago, and it’s still wrong today.
During the month of October, we are celebrating life. In the Gospel of Mark, we hear Jesus say: “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” How can children come to Jesus if they are not allowed to be born? Women say that they have a right to do whatever they like, but doesn’t the baby have a right to live? It has saddened me that we can get to see the baby in the mother, but we do not think that it is a human being.
As we go through the month of October, let’s pray really hard for life and turn our desire to the good for the world. If we do that, maybe God will heal our hearts so that we can be a country under God. With that being said, let’s pray for all of the women who have been abused by men, and let’s pray for us men so that we can respect women and become what God intended us to be. I really think that, when we truly change our hearts, the country will be a better place to live.