As witnesses of the Gospel of Life, we have to continually call ourselves back to the fundamental truth that at the heart of the Gospel is not an ideology or a moral code, but a person, Jesus Christ. Christ is alive in us through faith and the sacraments, and our mission is nothing other than being Christ s ambassadors to the world, offering hope and reconciliation in His name. On the threshold of the third millennium, Pope John Paul II exhorts us to remember the ageless witness of the martyrs who proclaimed the Gospel by laying down their lives out of love of God. I vividly remember a talk given by Prof. Stanley Hauerwas of Duke, in which he said that if there s nothing worth dying for then there s nothing worth living for. Our lives here on earth have meaning and purpose.
Life is indeed worth living, and that s the fundamental truth proclaimed by the pro-life movement.
Martyrdom is far from a rejection of the goodness and value of human life. Sometimes we think of the Christian martyrs as figures of the distant past or rare heroes like St. Maximilian Kolbe. But, as Pope John Paul II says, the Church right now is a Church of martyrs. In recent months, China, India, Sudan, Congo, and East Timor, among other places, have witnessed the intense persecution of Christians. The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.