Weekly Letter from the Pastor

Dear Fellow Parishioners of St. Benedict:

Last weekend Deacon Rich introduced us to the initiative Novena For Life which is the initiative of the Knights of Columbus Councils in the northern Bay Shore area: Our Lady of Fatima (Keyport), Holy Family (Union Beach) and St. Clement (Matawan). We are happy to host two of the evenings of prayer here this week on Monday, January 20th and Tuesday, January 21st beginning at 7:30 p.m. Hopefully this program will heighten awareness of the need for attentiveness to the life issues which confront us each and every day. Along with the Baby-Bottle-Boomerang fundraiser which kicks off this week, we pray for and then support Mothers who need support in birthing and rearing their children. As I wrote last weekend, national March for Life is this week (Friday) and the march on the State Capitol is this coming Wednesday, January 22nd.

Deacon Rich challenged us not to think of life issues in political terms but in light of the basic dignity given to each of us as a created being in the image and likeness of God. As such, we focus on all life issues, which essentially comes down to all basic human rights questions. In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope Saint John Paul II challenged us: “Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase. Life in time, in fact, is the fundamental condition, the initial stage and an integral part of the entire unified process of human existence. It is a process which, unexpectedly and undeservedly, is enlightened by the promise and renewed by the gift of divine life, which will reach its full realization in eternity. At the same time, it is precisely this supernatural calling which highlights the relative character of each individual's earthly life. After all, life on earth is not an ‘ultimate’ but a ‘penultimate’ reality; even so, it remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters.

“The Church knows that this Gospel of life, which she has received from her Lord, has a profound and persuasive echo in the heart of every person -believer and non-believer alike - because it marvelously fulfills all the heart's expectations while infinitely surpassing them. Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree. Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded.

“In a special way, believers in Christ must defend and promote this right, aware as they are of the wonderful truth recalled by the Second Vatican Council: ‘By his incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every human being’. This saving event reveals to humanity not only the boundless love of God who ‘so loved the world that he gave his only Son’, but also the incomparable value of every human person.”

Let us continue to work and pray for the integrity of this dignity.

Have a blessed week,
Fr. Garry