God’s Handiwork

Relevant to the Register’s pro-life coverage: 

Years ago, I heard a story that intrigued me. A family just had a new baby, and her older brother, still very young himself, was always trying to be with the baby. The reason was revealed thanks to a bit of technology. They had an intercom set up in the baby’s room in case she woke up and the parents would be able to hear her cries from the living room or bedroom, as there were speakers there.

One evening, as the parents sat in the living room, they heard their son talking to the baby through the intercom. He said to his baby sister, “Tell me what God is like; I can hardly remember.”

It was the word “remember” that caught my attention. It points to the intimacy of the act of creation; like in Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” and in Psalm 139:13 and 16, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb, and your eyes saw my unformed body.”  

I wonder, as our Father created our immortal soul and incorporated body and soul, did we catch a glimpse of him? Did he pause to gaze on his handiwork as he loved us into existence for his own purposes?

The veil between the spiritual world and the physical is thin but quickly becomes blurred. I know of a family who, when they used to pray the Rosary together, said their toddlers could see their guardian angels, but as they grew older, their vision of the invisible world was lost.

The ache in the human heart to return to God is as helpful as it is unsettling. It points to the possibility of union or reunion with our Heavenly Father, with the One who made us. We can have that intimacy again; fill the God-shaped hole in our being again by means of prayer. We knew him once; we can know him again. With open, persevering hearts, all of us can be made new, and we can grow in the experiential knowledge that we are truly his sons and daughters, beloved and precious to him, and utterly dependent on him.

Stephen Clark

Manila, Philippines

‘Highway to Hell’

Regarding “A Church Divided: Vatican’s Move on Same-Sex Blessings Raises Fears of Schism” (front page, Jan. 28 issue):

The grave and eternal ramifications of sexual agendas that propel the diverse misunderstandings of human sexuality are partially addressed by doctor of the Church on moral theology St. Alphonsus Ligouri, in his Theologia Moralis, Vol. II Book IVa., on the precepts of the Decalogue 1-6 (Mediatrix Press, p. 465). Speaking on sexual sins, St. Alphonsus writes, “Yet, since this matter is the more frequent and abundant in confessions, and on account of which a greater number of souls fall into hell, I do not hesitate to assert that everyone who has been damned was damned on account of this one vice of sexual impurity (or at least not without it).”

Yet we are paralyzed in properly publicly addressing modern progenies of “sexual impurity,” such as artificial contraception. The “pill” could arguably be our “pleasing” (Genesis 3:6) consumed “fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” The contraceptive freeway we voluntarily travel demeans women and devastates family. Artificial contraception is “intrinsically evil” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2370) and “intrinsically wrong” (Humanae Vitae, 14). Meaning:  Full knowledge, consent and unrepentant use of any artificial contraception can be an expressway to eternal damnation. Satan is not discriminatory, elitist or exclusive; he wants all of us with him, forever (heterosexual or homosexual). The devil does not care which road to hell is chosen by each individual. A music group (AC/DC) addresses the culmination of “this one vice of sexual impurity” in an applicable lyric: “No stop signs, speed limits; nobody’s going to slow me down. … I’m on the highway to hell.” 

Although “homosexual blessings” (one of contraception’s many offspring) allow convenient distraction and continued overlooking of the pill (and other methods), contraception is, and will continue to be, the ignored, yet devastating, 400-pound gorilla in the room. May God have mercy on us all. 

J. Marincel

Flower Mound, Texas