The culture of life versus the culture of death
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Let's read this poem by Vicente Huertas that makes us reflect "Only God gives life, but you have to transmit it and respect it. Only God can give faith, but you can give your testimony. Only God can give hope, but you can give it back to others. Only God can give love, but you can love your brothers. Only God can give peace, but you can plant it around you.

Only God can give strength, but you can cheer too. Only God is the way, but you can teach it to others. Only God is the light, but you can make it shine for everyone. Only God can do the impossible, but you can do what you can. Only God is enough for himself, but he prefers to count on you".

We started a new month and a new school year. Schools are once again taking lives to regain the spirit for which they were built. This month stands out March 25 as the day of the unborn child. When we were underage, our loved ones took care of us. When we become older we take care of the children and the elderly. We want to be committed to life.

Life is a great gift received from God as a task to guard it, whatever age and condition it is. It starts from the first moment of conception. That moment is the beginning of a new personal story. Contemporary science is already able to locate at that moment, through genetic engineering, what that person will be like and what characteristics it will have. There is no difference, therefore, between a person of that instant and one in fifty or one hundred years.

We are all custodians of the greatest gift. The question is, why do we value life from efficiency? In other words, if someone does something productive, it is valuable and if it does not yield it is not worth it. Recall the philosophical principle that first is to then act. By this, I mean that it is not fair to see the person only from the perspective of having (money, physical beauty, fame, success). The entrepreneur man is no more worthy than the woman who works in the fields. Much less is the father worth more than the son, even less the sick man than the man full of health.

The person of whatever condition he has dignity has rights and duties. Respecting your life and ensuring your integrity is already a duty of all. It's not a question of religion, let alone bigotry, not even worse than old-fashioned. It is a matter of humanity and natural reason; it's a matter of common sense. Perhaps, and I'm sure that when we open our eyes we don't see that even animals fight and defend life first? They, irrational beings, protect life by all means.

Hence it is very wrong to say: "Only Catholics defend life". It is worth insisting, life must be defended as the greatest gift received from God. How many people deny his generation because he didn't inherit money, fame, success or what's happened to him in his life. Let's love life the way we have it.

It can be dangerous to enclose the defense of life by "not killing cruelly, as happens with murders", opposing this is also defending life. But, today perhaps is driven by a mentality of the culture of death we do not value as such the life of a newly conceived being or a life of 2 or 3 months of engendered or convalescent.