Fr. Frank Pavone
Pontifical Council for the Family
Vatican City
"Repent and believe the Good News!"
The urgent call to repent marks the Lenten season, just as it marks the
preaching ministry of St. John the Baptist (Mt.3:2), of the Lord Jesus
(Mt.4:17), and of Peter and the Apostles (Acts 2:37-38). It is a call to make a
conscious and free choice to turn away from sin, which leads to death, and
embrace the Gospel, which leads to life. It is, in fact, the full flowering of
the call Moses issued in Deuteronomy 30:19, "I have set before you life and
death...Choose life!"
One of my favorite Lenten Gospel passages is that of the man born blind (John
9). We see here the drama of the will to accept or reject the call of Christ.
The man born blind receives his physical sight early in the story, but the rest
of the drama traces the birth of his spiritual sight. At first, he calls Jesus a
man (v.11); then a prophet (v.17); then one who is "from God" (v.33), and
finally, "Lord" (v.38).He comes to see who Jesus is, because he has a
willingness to believe. "Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?" (v.36).
This attitude of willingness stands in stark contrast to the stubbornness and
bad will of the Pharisees. Though confronted with the same evidence of the
physical healing, they try to explain away that evidence through their
interrogations of the man and his parents, and then by portraying Jesus as a
sinner, and finally by literally throwing the evidence out the door by ejecting
the healed man from their midst (see v.34).
The drama is repeated every day as our society struggles with the "Culture of
Death," which shows itself fundamentally in the ongoing tragedy of abortion. The
evidence is the same for all to see, made clearer than ever by genetics and
fetology, that abortion kills a human being. Some receive that evidence and,
with a willing heart, choose life. Others show the stubbornness of the Pharisees
and cling to their own ideology. For me the most stark example of this was the
day a group of pro-life people conducted a wake for an aborted baby in front of
an abortion facility. The baby, the size of a hand, was visible in a small white
casket. Some pro-abortion demonstrators looked at the child, and a pro-lifer
challenged them, "Look at the evidence right before your eyes. This is a baby!"
Believe it or not, the person's response was "That's your opinion!!"
Not to know the child in the womb is not a sin. But the refusal to know is.
Jesus declares to the Pharisees at the end of the drama of John 9, "If you were
blind, there would be no sin in that, but 'We see,' you say, and your sin
remains" (v.41).
"Repent and believe the Good News!" What good news? The good news, in the
words of The Gospel of Life, that "life is always a good...manifestation
of God in the world, a sign of His presence, a trace of His glory" (#34). This
Lent, let us choose life again!
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