Life Issues — An Oblate Youth Encounter Workshop

Workshop Notes by Fr Michael Twigg OMI — January, 2006, at Glenaladale, Victoria.

At age 4 a successful life is not peeing your pants

At age 12 a successful life is having friends

At age 17 a successful life is having a driver’s licence

At age 35 a successful life is having money

At age 50 a successful life is having money

At age 70 a successful life is having a driver’s licence

At age 75 a successful life is having friends

At age 80 a successful life is not peeing your pants

Are these the things that you determine the success or otherwise of life – if not what are they.

What does Life Sound Like?

What does Life Look Like?

What does Life Feel Like?

The two must fundamental and core Catholic beliefs are Trinity and Incarnation.

Trinity is not something just to be understood and but something to be believed and lived.

The Incarnation is one of THE core beliefs of the Catholic Church. It is the belief that the Son of God became a human in the person of Jesus Christ. This belief is that in becoming human, the Son of God remained divine.

Why did God do this?

There have been many theories but I believe we can summarise them into the following two:

The first is the one that has received great prominence in the history of the Church and that is that the Son of God became human to save us from our sins. He became human because we were in need of redemption and he needed to become one of us in order to defeat death.

The second reason and one that is increasing in awareness is that God became human in order to show us how good we are, to show us what we were capable of.

When Jesus himself was asked why he came to earth, he had a simple and clear answer – He said “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.”

God became one of us – so that we might become one with God.

Today’s topic is about life issues – What is it about life that God wants for us.

Who we are is God’s gift to us – who we are is our gift to God.

The Church has consistently advocated that life is sacred – We believe that we were created in the image and likeness of God. We believe that our dignity is intimately connected with the belief that we have come from God.

Every human being asks three questions – Where did I come from? – How do I live? – Where do I go when I die?

Every religion seeks to give an answer to these questions and every religion seeks to provide their followers with meaning in their life.

The Trinity is the answer that the Catholic Christian Church offers to these questions.

Where did I come from? – I came from God

How do I live? – I live like God – Christ centred life in right relationship

Where do I go when I do - We believe that we will be re-united with God after death.

These answers provide the Good News – This is our Good News.

Creator

Redeemer

Sustainer

Pope John Paul II wrote in The Gospel of Life:

Where Life is involved, the service of charity must be profoundly consistent. It cannot tolerate bias and discrimination, for human life is sacred and inviolable at every stage and in every situation; it is an indivisible good. We need than to show care for all life and for the life of everyone.

Consistent Ethic of Life – Seamless Garment

Consistency is not hard to understand. It flows from the nature of love itself. If we love God, we love the people God has created and redeemed. To stand with God is to stand with life, and therefore to stand against whatever destroys life. The Church defends the dignity of the human person, no matter what the assault on that dignity may be.

Catholic Christians are called to be concerned about abortion, euthanasia, education, health care, capital punishment, crime, war, hunger, racism, sexual discrimination, bullying.

Catholics are asked to see the person before the issue. With this view we are not only concerned about homelessness but more about the homeless person, we do not simply look at capital punishment, but at the person on death row. Ultimately when Christian believers become active in a cause supporting life and justice, they are not simply responding to the cause as such, but to Jesus Christ. Because Jesus is One Person and every person, the various ways of responding to him are to be consistent with one another, whether they involve feeding the hungry or stopping an abortion.

Connect Life Issues

If for example, one sees killing as a solution to the problems of society, then that view encourages capital punishment as well as abortion. If you hold that a person’s value depends on his or her productivity, that can spell trouble for a terminally ill patient as well as an uneducated immigrant.

If we can create a society that welcomes the poor and opens the door to a good education for them, we reinforce the attitude that enables that same society to welcome the unborn and make room for them as well.

Protection of human life is at the core of this consistent ethic. It takes precedence over others all other issues.

Everyone can’t do everything. People must specialise.

The way we approach each issue should be related to a systematic vision of life. As a Church we need to cover all life issues.

This consistent ethic cannot just be an ideal; it has to be in action.

Sometimes people will believe what you say but they will always believe what you do….

Loss/Grief – Life forever – Paper folded into 4 pieces.

Death - Christian Understanding of Death being a comma not a full-stop.

Christian funerals talk about a person into the future, not just past events.

Who we are is God’s gift to us. Who we become is our Gift to God.