By Bridget Spinks
ARCHBISHOP Barry Hickey has urged people to pray for the conversion of politicians’ and doctors’ hearts and for strong families, as it is through them that children, including the unborn, are best protected.
He made these petitions as reflections on the Joyful Mysteries – those encompassing the conception, gestation and birth of Christ – during a Holy Hour of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at St Mary’s Cathedral on the Vigil of the First Sunday of Advent, 27 November.
The Holy Hour, which followed the Vigil Mass, was offered at the request of Pope Benedict XVI, who urged the world’s Bishops to join him in a Vigil for All Nascent Human Life.
“Aware of how much threat there is in today’s world to children who are conceived in the womb, he has asked us to pray that their journey be a safe one, that their lives be protected,” Archbishop Hickey said during his homily in the Mass.
Prior to the Vigil, the Archbishop wrote to many different groups and movements throughout the Archdiocese to promote the sanctity of unborn life, either by going to their parish to pray for all nascent human life or to attend the Vigil in St Mary’s Cathedral, to pray that “the current acceptance of abortion in our society will be seen as the tragic mistake that it is and that we all respect nascent human life”.
There was a strikingly youthful presence in the congregation who stayed after the Vigil Mass to join Archbishop Hickey in praying the five Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary and for Benediction.
The Archbishop gave a short meditation and reflection on each mystery before it was prayed, drawing on themes from his recent Pastoral Letter on Children.
The First Joyful Mystery – the Annunciation – was offered for all pregnant mothers in the hope that every child conceived is to be loved. The second – the Visitation – was offered for strength for all families.
“The best protection comes for tiny children through the family. Therefore, we pray that families today be strong,” he said.
“At the same time, we think of families in great poverty. Even in our affluent country, there are many families who do not pay their mortgage, families who can’t pay their electricity bills, whose water is turned off because they can’t pay it.
“The whole family suffers, the children suffer.”
The Third Mystery – the Birth of Our Lord – was offered up so that the scourge of drugs may disappear from human society so that families and children may be protected from the damaging effects of drugs.
The Fourth Mystery – the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple – was prayed for the conversion of hearts – for politicians, for those who form social policy and for those doctors who perform operations that kill the unborn child – that they may see that every child conceived is to be preserved, loved and given a chance to grow.
The Fifth Mystery – the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple – was offered for those who were present and those who work to preserve life and offer support and protection for women.
Pope Benedict XVI also welcomed the beginning of Advent with a prayer for life and a defence of the human embryo.
The Pope presided over an evening prayer service at the Vatican on 27 November, part of a worldwide pro-life vigil.
Pope Benedict XVI said it was an appropriate initiative to launch Advent, the liturgical period in which the Church prepares to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
In a homily, he said the Church’s teaching against abortion comes from its teaching about the dignity of every human life and its concern that the unborn is most vulnerable to “the selfishness of adults and the clouding of consciences”.
“There are cultural tendencies that seek to anaesthetise consciences with spurious arguments,” the Pope said.
Regarding the human embryo, the Pope said science itself has demonstrated the embyro’s autonomous capacity of interaction with the mother, the coordination of its biological processes, the continuity of its development and its complexity as an organism.
“It’s not a question of a collection of biological material, but of a new living being, dynamic and marvellously ordered, a new individual of the human species,” he said.
“This is how Jesus was in Mary’s womb; this is how we each were, in our mothers’ wombs,” he said.
The Pope cited the early Church author Tertullian, who reasoned that abortion is wrong because, as he wrote, “He is a man, who is to be a man.” The Pope added that “there is no reason not to consider him a person from the moment of conception.”
Pope Benedict emphasised that the threat to human life does not end at birth.
He added that children today are often subject to abandonment, hunger, poverty, disease, abuse, violence and exploitation; faced with this “sad panorama of injustices” before and after birth, the Church calls everyone to responsibility, he said.
He urged leaders in politics, economics and communications to do everything possible to promote a culture that respects human life and to establish a network of services that support human life.
- Additional reporting by CNS