“God did not make death,” the book of Wisdom declares. Our God is a God of life, whose will for us is expressed in such words as being, wholesome, undying, imperishable. This God calls us “to walk in the light of Christ,” which is life, and not in the “darkness of hatred and sin,” which is death.
We must, therefore, be on the side of life, opposed to death. This
should include opposition to all those things that diminish life.
The
Gospel
is about two healing incidents in the life of Jesus, healings which
show that Jesus willed life, and willed full life. The Greek word
for being healed also means being saved: to be brought to full life
is the essence of salvation.
The
Second Reading
mentions another form of the diminution of life: poverty. No one
should live on the survival level: “there should be a certain
equality.”
We live in a society that pays lip-service to respect for life, and
does not even do that much for quality of life. Jesus Christ
challenges us to create a society that values life and rescues
people from all forms of death and dying.
Every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are necessary and suitable for the proper development of life. These means are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services. Therefore, a human being also has the right to security in cases of sickness, inability to work, widowhood, old age, unemployment, or in any other case in which he is deprived of the means of subsistence through no fault of his own.U.S. Bishops, Pastoral Letter on Marxist Communism, 1980:32.