VIGIL PRAYER FOR UNBORN LIFE

My beloved diocesans

The Holy Father Benedict XVI has put in move a very important initiative and without precedents in the Church: The Pope has called all Catholics worldly to celebrate a vigil of prayer for unborn life next Saturday 27 of November in the Eves of the Advent. He himself will celebrate it in the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome and he has asked the Bishops to do the same in their Dioceses with the implication of the Parishes, associations and movements.

Our Diocese unites cordially and with total conviction to this initiative of the Universal Church: as your Bishop I call upon to you all to participate in the vigil that I will preside at S.I. Concathedral in Castellón at 20:00 hours in the indicated date. it is the most important and urgent that we can do for now! We have to pray by all human life and in special by all unborn life, responding to the call of the Pope.

This initiative of Holy Father says to us well to clear the extreme importance that has the announcement of the Gospel of the life at this concrete moment of history. The human life is threatened today because of a “relative culture and utilitarist culture” more and more extended, that confuse the reason to discover the own dignity to us and inviolable of each human being, whatever it is the state of his development. We have to be conscious of the threats that are hung over the unborn life as a result of the laws that allow the legal abortion and, even, dare to declare it, against all justice, like a “right”. The banalization of the abortion from the power and different mass medias is mining the moral conscience of many people, specially of youngest. It is necessary to remember once again that the abortion is morally the very serious crime, as reminded us Vatican II Concile.

For that reason we have to pray to God, only Owner of the life, to turn the hearts and slowly by slowly that the culture of the death may be replaced in our society by the culture of the life, that welcomes and promotes the human life and has the charge of its sacred dignity. In the Advent we prepare ourselves for the celebration of the Birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, fact man: its Birth is the great one Yes of God to the human life, to all human life. The Son of God with his incarnation has been united, in certain way, with all man. Christ, the New Adam, simultaneously who reveals the mystery of God Father and his love, declares thus totally who is the man to the own man: Christ discovers the sublimate to us of the vocation to that all human being is called: it is created by God by love and for the Life.

In the Eucharist adoration in the vigil we will thank the Lord, who with his Birth and the total gift of itself, has given a sense and value to all human life and we will invoke his protection on each human being called to the existence. As Church we feel the duty to give out the voice with courage to those who do not have voice, to once again affirm with firmness the value of the human life and its inviolable character, and, at the same time, to make a pressing call to all and each one, in name of God: respects, defends, loves and serves to the life, to all human life! (cf. EV 5).

The vigil of prayer for the unborn human life will be a shout, that rises to God Father, giver of all good, in order that all human life is respected, protected and loved. I wait for you to all.

With my affection and blessing,

+ Casimiro Lopez Llorente
Bishop of Segorbe-Castellón