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My Brothers and sisters in Christ this past week I offered a funeral Mass for a twenty year old who committed suicide. He was the child of a wonderful Catholic family, very dedicated, very loving, very faithful Catholic family who loved their son very, very deeply. During the homily of that Mass I asked the question "why did he commit suicide?" and really there was no answer, and the family had no answer, no clues at all that anything was wrong. He wrote a letter to them and even from the letter, there was nothing clearly wrong, it seemed as much as anything that he committed suicide out of boredom, out of boredom with life.

If only he knew how much he was loved by his family, if only he knew how sacred his life was, and how precious. If only he knew how much the Good God really loved him, he would never had considered suicide.

I mention that because you and I during the month of October we celebrate respect life month and the entire Church throughout the world lifts up her prayer to God for a return to sanity for a return to the sacredness of human life; because as a nation, and really as a world, we seem to be forgetting with every passing day the sacredness of human life; every single human life without exception.

Our Lord during this Mass we pray will remind every one of us, and during this month and months to come, will remind our entire nation of the value, the dignity, the preciousness, the sacredness of the human person, whether inside the womb or inside the nursing home, whether healthy or permanently disabled, all are precious in God's sight.

And so in this homily which is really a respect life homily I want to speak about the preciousness of our lives which God has given to us, and to the violence against human life which is taking place in our country on a growing scale, particularly abortion and euthanasia, and there is a really growing rate of suicide, in particular among our young people.

Of all of the things which God has created in this vast and wonderful universe of His, you are the most important; that is the rock solid foundation of the Church's teaching on the sacredness of human life. Of all things created by God, you are the most precious, the most important, the most sacred in God's eyes.

New Age philosophy which is certainly gaining popularity in our country would say that mankind, that you, are just one form of life among millions. No more important than anything else; you and a squid equal importance, no difference. This of course is false, it goes against the heart of our Catholic faith which says that Christ came to redeem not a squid, but you and I, came to redeem us, who are most important of all God's creatures.

Of all the things in the physical universe, man alone is created in God's image. You alone are created in God's image. You alone are given freedom and the ability to love. You alone will live forever. That's what it means to have an immortal soul, we will live forever.

To be in the image of God means that long after the sun in the sky is burned out and becomes a cinder in the heavens, billions of years from now, you and I will live and sing the praises of God. That is what it means to be in the image of God. The sun will be short lived in comparison with you.

Of all of the creatures in our vast world only you receive the promise of eternal life. It is only to a man that the Son of God could say: "This day you will be with Me in paradise". We are truly the apple of God's eye. And that is the heart of the Church's teaching on respect for all human life. We are the apple of God's eye. Nothing delights God more than you.

Because God loves you and values us even more than we do ourselves He places a commandment upon us, and the commandment is this: love one another and make use of the things of this earth. Love one another, make use of the things of this earth. Use things, but love people.

Some people claim that Catholic moral teaching is way too complicated and way too burdensome. Well those four words summarize Catholic moral teaching, if we live by those we are going to be doing pretty well. Catholic moral teaching is summarized by the words: Love people, use things.

The only problem is that in our country we got it backwards, and we are being taught to use people and love things. Everything around us is telling us that things, stuff, prestige, importance, appearance...things are what are important, those are what give us value, those are what we are to love and if people get in our way then use them. We are being taught to use people and to love things. We are being taught to be selfish and to be rugged individualists who say: "My things, my stuff, my pleasure is most important, and other people are to be used, or at the best to be tolerated in order to help me to get what I wish".

The effect of all of this is that in our nation and in our world people have become less important, less important even than things. It is become acceptable to kill our unborn children when they are inconvenient and get in the way of acquiring things. We have killed nearly thirty million so far, soon it will be acceptable to euthanize our elderly, which means to end the lives of our elderly when we decide that they are a burden to us, or too expensive to us or to our nation, then we will determine that it is OK to end their lives.

But we are to use things and love people, we are building our nation's future on the ashes of our unborn children and soon upon our elderly and the numbers of our dead are rising by the millions every single year. Abortion is an acid which is eating away at the heart of our country, and soon euthanasia to an equal degree. It is eating away at our virtue as a people, at our ability to love one another, at our ability to even love God who has created us. If life is disposable then why would we love God who has created life?

If our unborn children are not safe in our land and if our elderly will not be safe in our land, then no one will be safe. And indeed we will become more and more violent with every passing year.

Our young people are committing suicide at a greater proportion than ever before. Why is that? Because they have grown up in a generation which says: "Life is disposable", they made it past the womb, but they are scared by the knowledge that they might not have; that life is indeed up to the decision of others whether we live or whether we die.

But if life comes from God and is embraced by God, then indeed it is something very precious.

Humanly speaking, every second of our future God knows exactly what we need, and we must pray to the Good God to convert our hearts to convert our land, to forgive us so that the future we have is what the Lord has in store for us.

This is what we pray for and what we long for, and there are signs that this is happening more and more. There are many, many people returning heroically to obedience, service, love of the Good God. We see it in this parish and on parishes across our country. People who are coming not because our society says: "You have to come to Mass", but because you know the Good God says you must be here to receive the body and blood of Christ, and so have life and so have hope.

I am so constantly encouraged by you and your desire to be heroic in following and serving the Good God within our Catholic faith.

I see so many of you who are orthodox, which means 'right believing' , who are zealous Catholics, committed to the truth and to serving God. And our Lord will use you in the building up of our nation, and we must not lose heart.

What are we to do? Well during respect life month, but not only then but always, we pray daily for an end to abortion.

Cardinal O'Connor a number of years ago said: "The critical need in the pro-life movement today is the need of prayer, prayer that pounds the heavens for justice, prayer that pleads with God for mercy, prayer that washes our minds, cleanses our souls and purifies our hearts."

During this respect life month I encourage you to take part once again in the most important prayer, the most powerful prayer that is available to us at Sts. Peter and Paul (parish), Eucharistic adoration. No person who goes before our Lord Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament for prayer, rest and refreshment will go away unchanged. No one who goes before the Lord will have their prayer go unheard. The hundreds of you who adore our Lord Jesus every week in this parish in the Blessed Sacrament are making a difference in your own lives and the life of our nation.

You are at the cutting edge of where our Lord Jesus wants His Church, at His feet, before the Sacred Heart in the Blessed Sacrament, praying for the future, for all of those who are precious images of God, in our family, in our neighborhoods and nation.

We pray that our Lord will bring us back to union with Christ Jesus His Son, back to His Sacred Heart, to a holiness of life where our Lord can use us in His great plan to bring our nation back to Himself.

You and I, we see the difficulties around us and we look at them with clear eyes, and we must do that; it's called honesty. But we do so profoundly and deeply hopeful because we entrust everything to God who has made us in His image and promised to be with us in all things until the end of time.

As God looks at us and at your prayers what He sees is a little image of Himself, and when he looks at you and sees a reflection of Himself in just a little way, very little, very finite reflection of Himself He so falls in love that He can't refuse us anything when we come before Him if it will make us holy and joyful and get us into heaven.

Fired by this truth we pray for mothers considering abortion, may God show them His image which they carry in their wombs. We pray for the disabled and the elderly whom our society tells us more and more are not very important; we know otherwise, so we pray for their protection. We pray for our young people who in not knowing God have grown bored with life and found it a burden. We place them and all of the people of our beloved land next to the Sacred Heart of Jesus where they will be safe for ever.

Blessed be God who lives and watches out over us for ever.