Baby Luz with her parents I recently attended a titanic conference on Pope Paul’s 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, whose 50th anniversary we observed last Wednesday. 700 people from around the country filled the Ontario Conference Center to … talk about the Pope’s ban on birth control. But hasn’t that train already left? Have we not all seen Monte Python’s lampoon “Every Sperm is Sacred”? Indeed we are quite used to the world’s mockery of the Catholic imagination. Imagine that every little bitty thing, every thing that is, is sacred, a sacrament of God’s infinite beauty.
Well, we began our conference at 7am with Holy Mass. Sitting in the front row of our packed room was a young couple and their 13-month old daughter, Luz. She was locked in a titanic struggle with gravity, her first attempts to keep all 24 inches of her towering body upright. I must say, she didn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of the moment. She smiled, she laughed, she fell down and bounced back. She rejoiced to discover that she could walk, that she could escape the floor and break free of gravity’s shackles. Precisely at the moment of consecration, as the priest lifted the Body of Christ high above his head, baby Luz was dancing, flying, soaring before the altar!
One had the sense of dancing and flying as we gathered in plenary sessions to talk about Humanae vitae. Human life is God’s gift of flight, of escaping the bonds of earth. We live in a culture of death, spawned largely by contraception: by the separation of sex from babies, by the divorce of the marital act from the generation of new life. It was baby Luz, laughing as she took her first steps into this world, giggling as she bumped against the altar during Mass, that made our conference on Humanae vitae vital. It was her beautiful young parents, who have dared to bring four children into this dark world, children who will sprinkle light wherever they dance. Do not believe for one minute that another child is a curse, an enemy, a disease, a “mistake.” Bravely conceive babies; have as many has you can, and glorify God in your bodies!
Well, we began our conference at 7am with Holy Mass. Sitting in the front row of our packed room was a young couple and their 13-month old daughter, Luz. She was locked in a titanic struggle with gravity, her first attempts to keep all 24 inches of her towering body upright. I must say, she didn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of the moment. She smiled, she laughed, she fell down and bounced back. She rejoiced to discover that she could walk, that she could escape the floor and break free of gravity’s shackles. Precisely at the moment of consecration, as the priest lifted the Body of Christ high above his head, baby Luz was dancing, flying, soaring before the altar!
One had the sense of dancing and flying as we gathered in plenary sessions to talk about Humanae vitae. Human life is God’s gift of flight, of escaping the bonds of earth. We live in a culture of death, spawned largely by contraception: by the separation of sex from babies, by the divorce of the marital act from the generation of new life. It was baby Luz, laughing as she took her first steps into this world, giggling as she bumped against the altar during Mass, that made our conference on Humanae vitae vital. It was her beautiful young parents, who have dared to bring four children into this dark world, children who will sprinkle light wherever they dance. Do not believe for one minute that another child is a curse, an enemy, a disease, a “mistake.” Bravely conceive babies; have as many has you can, and glorify God in your bodies!
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