Welcome life as God’s gift
Vatican /News

Por: Sr Bernadette Mary Reis, fsp | Fuente: Vatican News

Pope Francis continues his catechesis on the Commandments during Wednesday’s General Audience saying that welcoming life as God’s gift corrects a vision of life interpreted as a problem to be eliminated.

During the Wednesday General Audience, Pope Francis reflected on the Fifth Commandment: You shall not kill. When life is welcomed as a gift from God, he said, the vision of interpreting life through the lens of eliminating problems can be corrected.

The reading from Wisdom 11:24-26 provided the inspiration for the Pope’s remarks. Pope Francis reaffirmed that the Fifth Commandment is concise and to the point. It is “a defending wall for the foundational value in human relations: the value of life”, he said.

 

Gift of God, not a problem

 

Pope Francis then noted a contradictory approach to life: the suppression of “human life in the mother’s womb in order to safeguard other values”.

It is not right to 'take out' a human being, no matter how little, to resolve a problem. That is like hiring a hitman to resolve a problem.

 

Fear is the culprit

Fear leads to violence and rejection, the Pope continued. Welcoming life as a gift of God leads to accepting life in all of its expressions. Pope Francis mentioned that parents are in need of true support should they discover that the baby they are expecting will be disabled. Then he said,

 

A sick child, …just as an elderly person, needs assistance…. He or she who is presented as a problem is in reality God’s gift who can draw me out of my self-centeredness to make me grow in love